Comments on: Dell Management Console 2.0 – What a Crap!

By: admin

admin — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 05:48:06 +0000

Btw, I finally got the latest ITA 8.8 working on W2K3 Web and MSSQL 2008 R2 Express, it does working but need some tweak, see my other post.

Btw, starting ITA 8.8 on up, you can install IT Assistant management station on these 64-bit operating systems like W2K8 and R2.

By: admin

admin — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 12:45:16 +0000

Thanks, I’ve configured the SMTP email server in OMSA 6.4, but it’s not what it mean to.

It is actually used for “E-mails the contents of this window to your designated recipient. See the Server Administrator User’s Guide for instructions about configuring your Simple Mail Transfer Protocol (SMTP) server.”

Btw, does ITA require R2 of w2k3 or just normal w2k3 is also fine?

Finally, I just found this useful link
http://www.tachytelic.net/2010/03/setting-up-e-mail-alerts-from-dell-openmanage-omsa/

However, I still think ITA will be my permanent solution as SNMP trap is the proper way to get email alert, besides, I don’t particularly like adding external script to each of my Dell box.

By: mzerach

mzerach — Mon, 14 Mar 2011 11:26:02 +0000

Dell Server Administrator version 6.4.0 can be configured to send emails without using the ITA console. Under preferences.General Settings, never used it that way only with ITA management console. When installing the OpenManage ITA console it will only run on WS03R2 and with SQL 2005, 32 bit. I tried with dell onsite to get the DMC 1.1.1 installed and running it failed super complicated and buggy. We reverted back to the last version of OpenManage. I was planning to try DMC 2.0 but it does not sound like it has changed much from the 1.1.1 version.

By: RobVM

RobVM — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:47:36 +0000

We are using the 1.x vcenter plug-in…it is a virtual appliance and the install was easy, the only problem I had was the cimagent portion of the OMSA was not installed, so I had to re-run the install with the -c option…not explained very well in the install instructions but after that the plug-in found my ESX hosts and inventory and monitoring is successful. You can also use it for bare-metal deployment of hosts, something I’ll look at in the future.
Something to remember with ITA, last time I checked, it still only worked on a 32-bit server.

By: admin

admin — Fri, 11 Mar 2011 17:24:40 +0000

Thanks for dropping by, actually I was really pissed that night and wrote the above. The installation was on a clean installed W2K8 R2 with MSSQL 2008 R2 Express, and it just kept failing, I did read that long Readme.txt, but it won’t help me going anywhere, I really wonder why would people use such a complicated software in the first place.

I’ve also looked vCenter Plugin, there is a latest update on DellTechCenter, seemed it’s also buggy and the pre-requirement is almost equal to DMC, well close, so I will wait till version 2.0 to be released later.

Yup, I am going to give Dell IT Assistant a try later, install in a VM and connect to OpenManage portgroup and receive those SNMP trap from the hosts.

Finally, I really don’t understand why Dell couldn’t make OpenManage better by adding email alert to complete it instead of using ITA or DMC to get trap and then get alert.

By: RobVM

RobVM — Wed, 09 Mar 2011 18:33:34 +0000

I’ve got to tell you, I loved this post! Very humorous. I have been waiting for Altiris 7.1 and DMC 2.0 for a while now, been looking around for any information about it and found your post. The problem you describe sounds similar to others I have seen. Altiris is a complicated product, and it seems Dell is trying tio leverage it so they don’t have to build their own tool, even though they purchased Kace and now own an Altiris competitor.
For you I might recommend you try the Dell vCenter plug-in, it lets you manage your Dell ESX hosts right through vCenter. And you could also keep using the Dell IT Assistant, although it doesn’t have all the capability of DMC, it will monitor your Dell servers, and can also be an SNMP trap.