Dell's DRAC card sucks
October 30, 2008
I've worked with the my 1855 blade enclosure for a while, now, and I feel pretty confident in saying the following:
A) Dell's DRAC is a very useful device which facilitates remote administration
B) at least it would, if it didn't suck so much
The blade enclosure comes with a DRAC module that is inserted into a slot in the back. It's paired with an avocent KVM module connected to the blade units. You access the KVM through the DRAC web site, which is the real problem.
Every Dell technician I've complained to has said the same thing. "Yes, the DRAC is slow. Very slow, and underpowered". It's not just slow, it vacillates between borderline and completely unusable. On a good day, expect 3 minutes for the page to load. On a bad day, don't expect to load the whole page.
It also seems to occasionally lose track of the KVM. It's happened a few times so far, and there doesn't seem to be any reason for it. Either the DRAC will see the KVM and not be able to administer it (like what is happening right now), or the DRAC won't see the KVM at all.
It is very frustrating, and Dell's techs seem apologetic, but there doesn't appear to be a fix for it. It just sucks.
Next time I'm headed into the colocation, I'm just hooking the console port into the KVM that is connected to the non-blade servers. At least that way I'm not reliant on Dell's sorry excuse for a controller to access the video on my servers.
Posted in General
Email me
content rss
October 30th, 2008 at 10:48 am
I was just at our colo replacing a dead fan on one of our servers and the data-center guy was talking about how they call DRAC "drag" because it's so slow. I mean... not that funny I guess...
October 30th, 2008 at 10:50 am
@John
Tell him I sympathize with him. Thanks for the comment!
October 30th, 2008 at 11:07 am
We had similar problems with our dell servers, but since we are now using Sun server I love the iLom. It's buildin and works mostly flawless with Windows and Linux clients.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:24 am
Next time.. you won't buy Dell.
;)
October 30th, 2008 at 11:30 am
which DRAC? drac 5 isn't the easiest to get working, I've struggled with the plugins for KVM and virtual media (no-go on 64bit fc9 so far). But once that's set up, it's pretty usable. I can't even complain about performace. Better than any KVM solution I've seen.
I was disappointed that no SNMP sensor data is available on the DRAC interface, you need to poll the OS with openmanage installed instead.
I have no nice things to say about SUN's iLOM cards other than: recent firmware updates have made things better.
October 30th, 2008 at 11:36 am
@anonymous
iLom sounds interesting. That's great that it's properly engineered, as opposed to Dell's which sounds great until you try it.
@dan c
I'm stuck with Dell for this generation, but I'm open to suggestions for the next one. Who do you like?
October 30th, 2008 at 11:42 am
@bunk
Here's the info from my DRAC units.
DRAC/MC Date/Time=Thu Oct 30 14:39:36 2008 GMT+00:00
Primary DRAC/MC Version=1.5.0 (Build 10.01)
Standby DRAC/MC Version=1.5.0 (Build 10.01)
Firmware Updated=Tue Oct 07 23:33:33 2008 GMT+00:00
Hardware Version=A00
October 30th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Funny, I'm now cursing Solaris ILOM (T5120's). I guess it's because of lack of familiarity.
I agree that the DRAC for Dell Blades does suck. We ended up buying their IPKVM for actual KVM remote management (wasn't spectacular either).
The DRACs we had at my last job for the 2950's didn't seem that bad though. Granted, we weren't running Windows servers, so there was little overhead for RHEL4 and command line.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:16 pm
@reamer77
I've not looked into the DRAC units for the individual servers. Are they not dedicated physical modules like the enclosures', or do they "borrow" resources from the system?
October 30th, 2008 at 12:19 pm
Their farktastic DRAC 5 KVM doesn't work:
- with FF 3.0 on Linux / Windows
- on IE 7.0
Why did they have to make a browser plugin? What's wrong with a standalone app?
I could get IBM's RSA II working just fine; and that just cost Dell €200k on the latest project I was working on.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:22 pm
HP's iLO cards are actually really nice, and you can even use them in Dells. Never had an issue with iLO speed on an HP. You gotta get them to fix that since remote console control is a basic infrastructure management requirement.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:48 pm
Matt> I'm a fan of Big Blue old and new primarily.
Actually most vendors' offerings have their flaws in one way or another.
But some are engineered better from the off.
October 30th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
@matt
On the PE2950's, they *seemed* to be independent of the system. You could power on and off the server, reset it, etc. I'm assuming it's independent since it's a card, and I could have a PE2950 turned off, and then through its DRAC, turn the server back on; or perform other functions like mounting an iso file.
October 30th, 2008 at 1:08 pm
wow, I opened a can of worms with this post!
@nixar: I've noticed a lot of IPKVM stuff lately that used crappy java applets. My newer Belkin IPKVM doesn't work without IE6, and the one from a year ago works fine still. I don't know what is behind it, but I wish they'd stop.
@ernie oporto
Wild, the HP card worked in Dell? Are they a bus card, like PCI?
@dan c
I haven't worked with a "large" amount of vendors, but I've noticed a lot of underlying differences. We got some Silicon Mechanics machines at one point. They both had their rabbit ears on the front of the case break off. They were made of cheap plastic. That should have been a sign.
@reamer77
That sounds great. I'm going to go shopping and see if I can get some for a couple of machines that I would rather not lose control of and have to go visit the colo. Thanks for the heads up.
October 30th, 2008 at 6:28 pm
Agreed with ernie on the HP ilo. They work great and you can either use a browser plugin with ie, or java on any os.
Haven't use one as an add on card, but we buy hp servers with the ilo2 built in.
November 14th, 2008 at 6:28 am
Just installed the new firmware 1.40 and my DRAC now works like a charm. No more slow web GUI response, power charts, console redirection now works with Firefox.
November 14th, 2008 at 8:48 am
@Anonymous
I'll check it out. Thanks for the heads up. If it works, I'll make a post about it. Choirs of angels will sing, and much happiness will reign down.
December 10th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
We have DRAC 5 cards in about 100 Dell 2950 systems and IMHO they work great.
Very fast and useful even for remote server installs, by mounting the media.
DRAC 4 cards Dell 2850 are useful as well but with a lot of bugs, some of them work like a charm, some cannot be accessed despite all the software reinstalls and firmware upgrades
DRAC 3 cards: USELESS and slow to extreme. GUI next to imposible to use, telnet is OK
DRAC/MC in 1855 blades, very slow as well, Https will time out half times.
Just our experience,
Alex
December 10th, 2008 at 4:48 pm
@Alex
Thanks for that breakdown. My only experience thus far has been with the 1855 chassis, so I'm heavily biased against :-) I'll keep in mind that not all DRAC units are as bad as my experiences.
So out of curiosity, how do you get DRAC cards for the other servers? Can you just call Dell and say "I've got a 2850 that I'd like to stick a DRAC in"?
January 7th, 2009 at 11:21 am
+1 . DRAC is slow .
June 5th, 2009 at 4:09 pm
I know this is an ancient thread, but I thought I'd add a comment. the DRAC5 is flawless on my 2950's. I can do remote installs from isos on my laptop without a hitch. They're fast and reliable as well. At least with the 2950's and I believe 1950's, there is a DRAC slot to add one.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
I feel your frustration entirely. We have an 1855 blade system and the DRAC is just god awful slow when it does work.
June 17th, 2009 at 1:51 pm
Thanks, Mike. It's frustrating for sure, especially when you depend on something so much like you have to with the DRAC
July 14th, 2009 at 2:54 pm
I just bought a bunch of DRAC5s for my 2950s that run Fedora. Assuming I connect to them via a windows box, the console doesn't look bad, until I startx. It's totally white washed and looks like crap. I've played with the session video settings but no go. Anyone else see anything like that? I've even tried lowering the resolution and amount of colors in x.conf and still looks like crap.
October 23rd, 2009 at 2:50 pm
I can't get in the DRAC Bios setup software, any clues? DELL 2950
August 11th, 2010 at 12:22 pm
I never had any problem with Dell DRAC cards.
The latest even have a working plugin for Firefox.
HP’s iLO cards, on the other hand, are a piece of shit.
They just don't work, IE8, compatibility mode, Firefox, different java versions, nothing works.
And you have to buy a license to get the useful features.
What bullshit is that, you buy a iLO card and then you have to pay more for a license to really be able to use it ?!!!
But the free functionality it supposed to have doesn't work, so why would I pay if the extra functionality you get then probably doesn't work either?
October 22nd, 2010 at 12:51 pm
If you're talking about DRAC5 for 2950 and up, unless you are using DDS or something to get to the location, it works like a champ. Sometimes you have to play with your browser settings, but usually not. Over where I used to work we got such good results that they were able to farm out entire Windows deployment to India (note, "used to work") over the DRAC. All you need is a local server to TS to, and a share where your WinPE ISO is saved, and the whole thing happens seamlessly.
August 20th, 2012 at 1:50 am
Right, I've been out of the industry a couple of years off living my life somewhere... I just went and bought a Dell R720 for a client and installed it only to find that now apparently I need to buy a license for the DRAC hardware that I've already bought?
I'm sorry, have I missed some major even where Dell's metaphorically entered its arse and never re-emerged? Perhaps I'm just a caveman now but I can't even work out where to get a license let alone how much it'll set me back.
Guess I'll just disable the damn thing and sit in the server room for the next few days. Mentally noted: NEVER buy another dell product again.