Comments on: Dell DRAC5 Virtual Media CDROM breaks OS installation, hangs on Windows boot, and makes megaraid_sas insane

By: Magnus

Magnus — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 17:02:17 +0000

Dell have now fixed Firefox support and virtual media in the next version of the DRAC (6) which comes with the new R610 and R710 servers by default (you pay extra for virtual media support). These things are a lifesaver. The DRAC card have been improving rapidly. The DRAC III was next to useless, but these new ones are great.

By: Chris Pepper

Chris Pepper — Thu, 07 May 2009 13:32:27 +0000

It’s nice to know we’re not the only ones with DRAC issues. I’ve gotten vKVM working in 32-bit Firefox/Linux (it’s a known issue that it doesn’t work in 64-bit). Unfortunately, when I tunnel the X11 connection to my Mac, the keyboard doesn’t work. I run a Linux VM under Parallels, and ssh to the cluster head, and then run Firefox there to the compute node. That *usually* gives me a working keyboard.

The Virtual Media plugin just doesn’t work — Mozilla 2 or Firefox 3. When I get it installed, the Connect button is dim.

Another issue: their browser detect is broken, so it serves an ActiveX control to Firefox/Mac, even though they correctly serve the Java plugin to Firefox/Linux (and in fact I’ve gotten it to work within Mac OS X once or twice). Dell won’t fix this, because they don’t support Macs.

By: Jason

Jason — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 21:31:41 +0000

Thank you for this information… I was having the exact same thing happen and this fixed it up.

Oddly, I had done a couple of pure virtual media installs through the DRAC on this same box in the past couple of days (long story) and they worked fine. It was just this one today that decided to not play.

I’m guessing that it latched on to a virtual media component that I forgot to disconnect. When I started having this lock up on the “Windows Setup” blue screen the first time today I was doing it purely over virtual media. Got the same result the next time when I tried redoing the install with pure physical media. Weird, but solved. Thanks again!

By: Robert

Robert — Sun, 12 Oct 2008 21:41:46 +0000

Dell DRAC5’s while handy I’ve found suck compared to IBM Remote Supervisor card especially on slow links I had a server in china I had to administer what a bugger it was to get access to the remote console timed out so many times it wants funny.

IBM Servers you can change the timeout period (including setting it to never) on the intial login, there isn’t too many steps to get to the remote console and there is far better cross-browser support. You also dont seem to need to download a huge plugin from the remote server (why dell cant offer a simple link to download from their servers is beyond me from the DRAC page).

Once you get to the remote console its great however as the linux console session doesn’t require much bandwidth to run.