How to upgrade firmware on Dell DRAC?

DRAC stands for Dell Remote Access Controller. The DRAC on current models is a separate chipset and board that is connected to the server main board with its own network interface as well as a direct configuration accessible during system initialization.

DRAC has a default TCP/IP address and can be change during system initialization

I found dmidecode currently does not return any information about DRAC card on the system. If you have system tag with you can check online if systems include DRAC card.
* Put you system tag here,
http://support.euro.dell.com/support/topics/topic.aspx/emea/shared/support/my_systems_info/en/details?c=uk&l=en&s=gen
* Click on "Original System configuration"
* Search for "DRAC"

Here is firmware upgrade process.

* Download the firmware for your system, In my case it was Power Edge 2950 system. I found firware versions here.

* Download windows zipped exe file and extract it.There should be only one file named "firmimg.d5".

* Copy the same to your tftp server at /tftpboot/pxelinux.cfg/ location. (Can share it and mount on tftpserver or use WinSCP to copy files to remote unix system)

* Login to drac server using the IP assigned to DRAC.
Before upgradation firmware version

[root@npatil ~]# ssh drac-ip
root@drac-ip's password:

Dell Remote Access Controller 5 (DRAC 5)
Firmware Version 1.0 (Build 06.05.12)

$ racadm fwupdate -g -u -a tftpserver-ip-address -d firmimg.d5
Firmware update completed successfully. The RAC is in the process of
resetting. Please wait up to a minute for this to complete.

Please do not make any changes in DRAC configuration while doing firmware upgradation.

It may disturb upgrade process.

After upgradation Firmware Version

[root@npatil ~]# ssh drac-ip
root@drac-ip's password:

Dell Remote Access Controller 5 (DRAC 5)
Firmware Version 1.20 (Build 07.03.02)

SAN terminologies

Here I am trying to put every definition related to SAN on single page. Its a collective information from different sites.

AoE: ATA over Ethernet: its a network protocol designed to access SATA storage devices over the Ethernet networks. AoE does not rely on network layers above Ethernet, such as IP and TCP.
The advantage of AoE is that you don't have the overhead of translating ATA to SCSI and then back to ATA (if you are using ATA drives). So there is a performance pickup.

NBD: The Linux Network Block Device (NBD) is a device driver extension to the Linux kernel. With the NBD device driver you can create a TCP/IP network connection between your local Linux system and a server program on a remote (not necessarily Linux) computer. But NBD has some limitations in terms of read/write operation and using NBD as a root file system.
Server processing load for iSCSI is much higher than AoE for equivalent throughput. AoE can spare processing cycles. iSCSI requires TCP/IP and its requisite complexity.

ENBD- Enhanced Network Block Device
GNBD- Global Network Block Device


WWPN: World Wide Port Name. A globally unique identifier for a port which allows certain applications to access the port. The FC switches discover the WWPN of a device or host and assign a port address to the device.

Multipathing: When transferring data between the host server and storage, the SAN uses a multipathing technique. Multipathing allows you to have more than one physical path from the Server host to a LUN on a storage array.
If a default path or any component along the path—HBA, cable, switch port, or storage processor—fails, the server selects another of the available paths. The process of detecting a failed path and switching to another is called path failover.


An active/active disk array, which allows access to the LUNs simultaneously through all the storage processors that are available without significant performance degradation. All the paths are active at all times (unless a path fails).

An active/passive disk array, in which one SP is actively servicing a given LUN. The other SP acts as backup for the LUN and may be actively servicing other LUN I/O. I/O can be sent only to an active processor. If the primary storage processor fails, one of the secondary storage processors becomes active, either automatically or through administrator intervention.

Invalid command 'php_flag', perhaps misspelled or defined by a module not included in the server configuration

Install php package and it will resolve the issue.

yum install php

how to configure APC pdu using minicom.

Prerequisite:

PDU installation with proper network and console connection.


Configuration:
1. Run minicom -s -c on
-s - Setup. It has different option to setup your console. It edits /etc/minirc.dfl which is default to store configuration.
-c It usage color's on console.

Note: you can even run only "minicom -s"

Your screen should be like this,

┌─────[configuration]───-──┐
│ Filenames and paths │
│ File transfer protocols │
│ Serial port setup │
│ Modem and dialing │
│ Screen and keyboard │
│ Save setup as dfl │
│ Save setup as.. │
│ Exit │
│ Exit from Minicom │
└──────────────────-─┘

2. Select serial port setup option to select connect to correct serial device. I have terminated serial console cable from PDU to my Linux box so my device was /dev/ttyS0

It may differ depend on OS.

┌────────────────────────────────────┐
│ A - Serial Device : /dev/ttyS0 │
│ B - Lockfile Location : /var/lock │
│ C - Callin Program : │
│ D - Callout Program : │
│ E - Bps/Par/Bits : 9600 8N1 │
│ F - Hardware Flow Control : No │
│ G - Software Flow Control : No │
│ │
│ Change which setting? │
└────────────────────────────────────┘

3. I had to set Hardware Flow Control to No as it was Yes by default.

4. Choose Save setup as dfl to save the configuration. By default it save configuration in /etc/minirc.dfl. Here is my minirc.dfl.

# Machine-generated file - use "minicom -s" to change parameters.
pr port /dev/ttyS0
pu baudrate 9600
pu bits 8
pu parity N
pu stopbits 1
pu rtscts No

5. Once you save and exit from the setup. It intitialize the serial console and gives you access to PDU. The next screen would be something like this,

Welcome to minicom 2.1


OPTIONS: History Buffer, F-key Macros, Search History Buffer, I18n
Compiled on Jul 26 2006, 06:38:09.


Press CTRL-A Z for help on special keys

User Name : apc
Password : ***

6. Default username and password for apc PDU's are apc/apc.

American Power Conversion Network Management Card AOS v3.7.0
(c) Copyright 2008 All Rights Reserved Rack PDU APP v3.7.0
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Name : Engineering Rack PDU Date : 29.03.2000
Contact : Nilesh Patil Time : 19:23:22
Location : Server Room 1 User : Administrator
Up Time : 0 Days 5 Hours 0 Minutes Stat : P+ N+ A+


Switched Rack PDU: Communication Established

------- Control Console -------------------------------------------------------

1- Device Manager
2- Network
3- System
4- Logout


- Main Menu, - Refresh, - Event Log
>

7. Select 2-Network option to configure network. You can define network settings like ip, netmask, gateway etc.

------- Network ---------------------------------------------------------------

1- TCP/IP
2- DNS
3- Ping Utility
4- FTP Server
5- Telnet/SSH
6- Web/SSL/TLS
7- Email
8- SNMP
9- Syslog
10- ISX Protocol

- Back, - Refresh, - Event Log

8. Likewise you can configure your PDU as per your need.

How to setup rsync

If you want to run rsync as a daemon make sure following thing.
- rsync is not hashed in /etc/services

- I have created following script to start rsync daemon which uses /etc/rsyncd.conf file

######### Creating start/stop script ..... /etc/init.d/rc.d/rsyncd

#!/bin/sh
# Rsyncd This shell script takes care of starting and stopping the rsync daemon
# description: Rsync is an awesome replication tool.

# Source function library.
. /etc/rc.d/init.d/functions

[ -f /usr/bin/rsync ] || exit 0

case "$1" in
start)
action "Starting rsyncd: " /usr/bin/rsync --daemon
;;
stop)
action "Stopping rsyncd: " killall rsync
;;
*)
echo "Usage: rsyncd {start|stop}"
exit 1
esac
exit 0

##########

######### Create /etc/rsyncd.conf file

### Rsync Configurations ###
uid = nobody
gid = nobody
use chroot = no
max connections = 10
syslog facility = local5
pid file = /var/run/rsyncd.pid
motd file = /etc/rsyncd.motd
lock file = /var/run/rsync.lock

[daily_backup]
path = /backup/
auth users = backup
comment = Main backup directory.
#### secrets file = /etc/rsyncd.secrets

IMP NOTE:
We should take care of trailing "/" while specifying the source directory for data copying.
for example,

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remoterdir/data/for/copy/ /local/data/dir

Above example means that /local/data/dir must be available to to receive data from /remoterdir/data/for/copy/, otherwise rsync will simply download all the files into the path given as destination.

rsync -avz -e ssh remoteuser@remotehost:/remoterdir/data/for/copy /local/data/dir
in this case "copy" directory will be created first under /local/data/dir directory and data will be populated from remote host.


I have created script to copy data remotely.

#!/bin/bash
# Script to copy data on remote machine.

RSYNC=/usr/bin/rsync
RSSH=/usr/bin/ssh
RUSER=backup
RHOST=backup.remote.host.com
RDATABASE=/backup/Database
RDIR=/backup/Directory/

$RSYNC -avz -e $RSSH /backup/daily/ $RUSER@$RHOST:$RDATABASE/MySQL/
$RSYNC -avz -e $RSHH /var/www/html/ $RUSER@$RHOST:$RDIR

Please generate password less keys to copy data remotely without interruption. Use "ssh-keygen"