Dell PowerEdge systems are “Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)” compliant systems. IPMItool software provides a set of command line options and arguments to provide both local and remote access to Dell PowerEdge systems (Local Management and Remote Management). Additionally IPMItool also provides raw commands to access hardware functions for additional IPMI compliant system management capabilities. Example IPMItool commands are “chassis power on”, “chassis power cycle”, “list system event log” and so on.
IPMI specification URL: http://www.intel.com/design/servers/ipmi/spec.htm
We can use IPMItool commands to manage a Dell PowerEdge system either locally (from the server) or remotely (from another system on which IPMItool is available). Detailed information about IPMI and IPMItool is available on the Internet. Here we do not explain all IPMItool commands.
Dell PowerEdge system with an Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) provides a powerful, easy-to-use local and remote management and configuration options to support IPMI technology. We can use IPMItool with or without iDRAC IP or iDRAC DNS host name of a Dell PowerEdge server for “Server Remote Management”.
Using PowerEdge R710 Server as an Example
Here we are considering a PowerEdge R710 server as an example to explain how to use IPMItool raw commands to get the details such as system model name, operating system in use (already installed) and the (DNS) host name of the system.
The following is an iDRAC session on PowerEdge R710 server.
