Basic OMSA install and usage with RHEL or CentOS 5.x

I am a big fan of Dell Poweredge hardware. It's well designed. It runs CentOS rock solid. It just works well. Dell must have figured out that many people like me feel this way (companies really). To their credit, Dell has a very full featured Linux support offering in the OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) for free.

To be fair, OMSA has historically had some speed bumps. Full 64-bit install has only recently been possible. And some past upgrades have not been smooth and actually required removing packages and manually removing directories and files in order to upgrade.

Note: make sure "plugins=1" is in the /etc/yum.conf

As root from a terminal prompt:

wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/bootstrap.cgi | bash
wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/community/bootstrap.cgi | bash
wget -q -O - http://linux.dell.com/repo/firmware/bootstrap.cgi | bash
yum install srvadmin-all OpenIPMI OpenIPMI-tools dell_ft_install

Install BIOS and firmware files

yum -y install $(bootstrap_firmware)
update_firmware --yes

Reboot if needed/requested. If you don't reboot, make sure that you exit and log back in to have the srvadmin bin and sbin directories set for you.

Just to make sure some startup services will be started on reboot.

chkconfig dsm_sa_ipmi on
chkconfig ipmi on
srvadmin-services.sh stop && service ipmi start && srvadmin-services.sh start

The web GUI is good. Just point your browser to http://yourhostname_or_IP:1311 and login as root and check it out from there.

The command line tools, however, can offer some very good information when you don't have that option or need some scripting magic. For example, "omreport" can provide MUCH information about your server and it's state. Here is a quickie on controller:

omreport storage controller

Will spew lots of data like:

Controller PERC 5/i Integrated (Embedded)

Controllers
ID : 0
Status : Ok
Name : PERC 5/i Integrated
Slot ID : Embedded
State : Ready
Firmware Version : 5.2.2-0072
Minimum Required Firmware Version : Not Applicable
Driver Version : 00.00.04.17-4.31.z-RH1

Minimum Required Driver Version : Not Applicable
Storport Driver Version : Not Applicable
Minimum Required Storport Driver Version : Not Applicable
Number of Connectors : 2
Rebuild Rate : 30%
BGI Rate : 30%
Check Consistency Rate : 30%
Reconstruct Rate : 30%
Alarm State : Not Applicable
Cluster Mode : Not Applicable
SCSI Initiator ID : Not Applicable
Cache Memory Size : 256 MB
Patrol Read Mode : Auto
Patrol Read State : Stopped
Patrol Read Rate : 30%
Patrol Read Iterations : 41
Abort Check Consistency on Error : Not Applicable
Allow Revertible Hot Spare and Replace Member : Not Applicable
Load Balance : Not Applicable
Auto Replace Member on Predictive Failure : Not Applicable
Redundant Path view : Not Applicable
CacheCade Capable : Not Applicable
Persistent Hot Spare : Not Applicable
Encryption Capable : Not Applicable
Encryption Key Present : Not Applicable
Encryption Mode : Not Applicable
Spin Down Unconfigured Drives : Not Applicable
Spin Down Hot Spares : Not Applicable

To see information on the status of the virtual disk created on your PERC RAID controllers:

omreport storage vdisk

List of Virtual Disks in the System

Controller PERC 5/i Integrated (Embedded)
ID : 0
Status : Ok
Name : vd0
State : Ready
Encrypted : Not Applicable
Layout : RAID-1
Size : 67.75 GB (72746008576 bytes)
Device Name : /dev/sda
Bus Protocol : SAS
Media : HDD
Read Policy : Adaptive Read Ahead
Write Policy : Write Back
Cache Policy : Not Applicable
Stripe Element Size : 64 KB
Disk Cache Policy : Enabled

ID : 1
Status : Ok
Name : vd1
State : Ready
Encrypted : Not Applicable
Layout : RAID-10
Size : 1,396.25 GB (1499212021760 bytes)
Device Name : /dev/sdb
Bus Protocol : SATA
Media : HDD
Read Policy : Adaptive Read Ahead
Write Policy : Write Back
Cache Policy : Not Applicable
Stripe Element Size : 128 KB
Disk Cache Policy : Enabled

The parameter changing mate to omreport is "omconfig". You get to set or change options and can even trigger events like MAKING SURE YOU HAVE VIRTUAL DRIVE PARITY (AKA parity scrub)!

So to verify/validate/fix drive parity issues, add a cron job (and/or run the command now) to make sure that the RAID groups on your PERC RAID controllers are in perfect shape. You don't want any failed disk rebuild surprises!

crontab -e

00 17 * * 0 /opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omconfig storage vdisk action=checkconsistency controller=0 vdisk=0 > /tmp/omconfig-vdisk0.out 2>&1 || cat /tmp/omconfig-vdisk0.out |mail -s "omconfig issue on `hostname`" admin
30 17 * * 0 /opt/dell/srvadmin/bin/omconfig storage vdisk action=checkconsistency controller=0 vdisk=1 > /tmp/omconfig-vdisk1.out 2>&1 || cat /tmp/omconfig-vdisk1.out |mail -s "omconfig issue on `hostname`" admin

Or better yet, get crazy with a shell script to dynamically ask for *each* controller and virtual disk to be checked. I will leave that up to you to figure out.

Again, just a basic install and use for OMSA. Take the time and go through the links, get the OMSA manual and enjoy.