Novell ZENworks Linux Management provides advanced features to deploy and manage Dell PowerEdge servers. Before you can use these features, you must install a newer release of the OpenIPMI driver than that included in the currently supported Linux distributions.
The following features are available for Dell PowerEdge servers in ZENworks Linux Management:
Dell Configuration bundles:
Let you use Preboot Services to configure a Dell PowerEdge server's BIOS, BMC, RAID, and DRAC settings and to create a Dell utility partition. For more information, see Using Dell Configuration Bundles
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.
Dell Update Package bundles:
Let you update and configure hardware and system settings on Dell PowerEdge servers. For more information, see Using Dell Update Package Bundles
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.
Dell inventory:
Lets you display inventory information specific to Dell PowerEdge servers. After discovering the hardware information about your Dell PowerEdge servers, you can use Dell Update Packages to update them, if necessary. For more information, see Hardware and Software Inventory
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.
Dell reports:
Let you run reports specific to Dell PowerEdge servers to find devices that do not have valid Dell Update Packages installed or to show devices with Dell applications installed (per device or per device model). For more information, see Dell Reports
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.
Dell provides the updated OpenIPMI driver as well as the Dynamic Kernel Module Support (DKMS) package to assist in compiling and installing the driver.
OpenIPMI is an open-source project to develop an Intelligent Platform Management Interface manager implementation for servers. Dell servers depend on OpenIPMI to collect low-level system information about the Backplane device, the Baseboard Management Controller, and so forth.
To install OpenIPMI and DKMS:
On a “golden client” system that has an identical setup to your managed Dell PowerEdge servers, install the kernel source and a development environment (gcc, make, and glibc-devel.).
A “golden client” system is a Dell PowerEdge server you want to configure manually and then use ZENworks Linux Management to configure a larger number of PowerEdge servers in your ZENworks system the same way. The “golden client” system must have the same operating system installed as the servers that you intend to manage. You perform these configuration steps on one representative device and then use ZENworks Linux Management to automate the installation of the other servers. The purpose of the “golden client” system is to eliminate the need to install the kernel source and the development environment on every managed PowerEdge server in your ZENworks system.
The kernel source and development environment (gcc, make, and glibc-devel) can be found on the media that you used to install SUSE Linux Enterprise Server or Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Use the package management software specific to your Linux operating system to install the necessary build tools. On SUSE Linux Enterprise Server, for example, you use YaST to install the kernel source and development environment.
Download DKMS and the latest OpenIPMI driver for your specific operating system from the Dell Linux Community Web. Both files are included in the appropriate tarball for your server’s operating system.
Install the DKMS and the latest OpenIPMI packages on your “golden client” system using the provided install shell script (install.sh). Detailed instructions are included in the Readme file (named README).
Use the mkrpm parameter to DKMS to build the RPM package of the OpenIPMI driver tailored to your “golden client” system setup. Detailed instructions are included in the DKMS man page (man dkms).
For example,
dkms mkrpm -m openipmi -v version_number.os
Where version_number.os represents the version number and operating system of the file that you downloaded in Step 2. For example, if you downloaded the openipmi-36.8.SLES9-1dkms.tar.gz file, you would run the following command:
dkms mkrpm -m openipmi -v 36.8.SLES9
Using the ZENworks Control Center, create a bundle that has the DKMS, the OpenIPMI driver, and the novell-zenworks-zmd-oem package from the Novell ZENworks 7 Linux Management media.
You can find the individual packages in the following locations:
DKMS: In the directory that you extracted the tarball to, dkms-version_number.noarch.rpm
Where version_number is the version number of DKMS that you downloaded in Step 2.
OpenIPMI driver: /usr/scr/packages/RPMS/noarch/openipmi-version_number.os-package_release_numberdkms.noarch.rpm
Where version_number.os is the version number and operating system of the file that you downloaded in Step 2. For example, if you downloaded the openipmi-36.8.SLES9-1dkms.tar.gz file, the version_number is 36.8.SLES9. Package_release_numberdkms refers to the package release number of DKMS. For example, 1dkms in the previous file example.
novell-zenworks-zmd-oem: In the directory that you mounted the CD to, data/packages/distribution/zlm7de-snapshots/novell-zenworks-zmd-oem-7.1.0-0.architecture.rpm.
For more information, see Creating RPM Bundles
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.
Use ZENworks Linux Management to deploy the bundle containing DKMS, OpenIPMI driver, and the novell-zenworks-zmd-oem package to your Dell PowerEdge servers where you have installed the ZENworks Agent. For more information, see Creating RPM Bundles
in the Novell ZENworks 7.2 Linux Management Administration Guide.