How To Troubleshoot Issues With iDRAC Service Module

iDRAC Service Module Troubleshooting Here's how to troubleshoot issues with the ISM. Video covers iDRAC7, iDRAC8 and iDRAC9 and demonstrates checking the config of the the ISM, in particular the NDIS/Virtual USB NIC config, driver and address.

Hello. My name is Aaron and i'm a Subject Matter Specialist in the systems management domain. In this video i would like to discuss troubleshooting the iDRAC service module on dell servers. Troubleshooting the iDRAC service module involves confirming the service module is installed and that is it is configured. To communicate with the server host operating system. When the iDRAC service module reports it is not communicating, the most common problem is that the NDIS or virtual USB NIC driver is missing from the host, or a non Automatic Private IP Address, APIPA, has been assigned to the virtual NIC.

You can start troubleshooting by checking the status of the service module in the iDRAC itself for the iDRAC7 and 8. As we have demonstrated here you can launch the iDRAC interface and log in. 'Service Module' tab is along the top of the overview tab, right here. You click on this tab, at this point we see the version of the service module installed on the operating system on the iDRAC itself. We see its connection to the operating system, whether or not it's stable, it can be connected and disabled and what the service module is currently monitoring from the operating system. If we need to change settings we simply click on 'Apply'. For the iDRAC9 navigate to the 'iDRAC Settings' tab and select 'Settings' under the 'Settings' menu.

We select the 'iDRAC service module setup' again like the iDRAC7/8 platform we get a similar configuration in this case. Service modules installed, it's been installed so there is not a last install again. This one has a difference because the operating system is currently running an older version than is currently available which we can update if so required. Right now in this case the service module is not running on the OS because it appears service module service has been stopped, however it is enabled, and if the services started again the iDRAC would start reporting the same information it reports in this case from the operating system.

Both service modules also allow you to check the configuration of the OS to iDRAC pass through NIC. With the iDRAC7 and 8 navigate to the 'Network' menu along the left hand side under 'iDRAC Settings' and select the 'OS to iDRAC Passthrough' sub-tab. On the sub-tab we see the pass-through configuration which is set to USB NIC. This is the standard configuration they come with, however as you can see you have the option of 'LOM' and 'Disabled'. Disabled generally is going to disconnect the iDRAC pass-through. LOM stands for Lan on Motherboard, and from here we see that the virtual USB NIC address is the automatically assigned ip address, and we can check the network configuration to find out if the service module and host OS are communicating. In this case they are.

For the iDRAC9 you would navigate to the iDRAC Settings', select 'Connectivity' and under the 'Connectivity' tab we again have the OS iDRAC passthrough, and again we get similar information to the iDRAC7 and 8. It's state currently it's enabled pass through mode which is again like 7 and 8. Either USB NIC or LAN on Motherboard and the virtual USB NIC address which again is an APIPA address and we can test the connection. As you can see this even though the service module service is not running the connection is working which means that once the service is enabled this service module should report correctly to the operating system.

We are currently looking at the iDRAC virtual console for the iDRAC7 that we were looking at earlier. This is simply to show that when the service module is installed in Windows starting with at least 2012 you also get various full iDRAC functions that you can execute from the start menu of Windows. Also wanted to demonstrate that you can also see from the Network and Sharing Center the status of the virtual USB NIC. This is our pass-through NIC. It's usually going to be referred to in Windows as a Remote NDIS Compatible Device'. If we look at the properties and go to IP version 4 you can see it does obtain its IP address automatically, and obtains its DNS information automatically.

If we were to run an ipconfig again we can see the NIC is right here, 169.254.0.2, this is the NDIS NIC that showed up under our network connections. While this is demonstrated in Windows, Linux and VMware have similar troubleshooting processes, where you would just check the status of the NIC under the operating system using native commands.

In this video we looked at how to troubleshoot installation of the iDRAC service module, we examined how the service module properties in both the iDRAC7 and 8 platform and also iDRAC9 platform work. We also looked at the need to use an APIPA network address on both service module and for the server host virtual USB NIC.

Thank you for watching.