How to create mount and troubleshoot Virtual Media in iDRAC

This video will show the how to create, mount and troubleshoot Virtual Media in iDRAC. Virtual media lets you emulate optical media or floppy disks.

Hello. Today we’ll be covering virtual media for the iDRAC. This is a useful tool as it allows us to install operating systems,  present drivers, or connect other files through Virtual Floppy.First, let’s cover some topics regarding Virtual Media, Remote File Share, and Boot to Network ISO. For Virtual Media, let’s note the following points. We can mount both a Virtual CD and Virtual Floppy simultaneously.

We can mount a local file as well as from a share on the network. As soon as you disconnect from the virtual console,  the media will also be disconnected. And lastly, it also can only be mounted from the GUI. For Remote File Share, let’s cover the following points. We can only mount one thing at a time. We can only mount from a share on the network. RFS will stay connected indefinitely until the connection is manually removed.

And lastly, we can mount using the GUI, WSMAN, Redfish, and RACADM. Now, let’s cover the features of Boot to Network ISO.  We can only mount one thing at a time, with the exception being if you are using SCP on iDRAC9 with firmware 4.0. We can only mount from a share. This will stay connected for a predetermined amount of time.

The default is 18 hours and this can be mounted by using either the GUI,  WSMAN, Redfish or RACADM. In this example, I’ll be showing you what it looks like to boot to an ISO through the virtual media.  First, we need to enable it.  Then we will choose to map CD/DVD.  I will be using the support live image for this example.  I will tell the console to boot to the virtual CD/DVD  and then power on the system.

It will take several minutes for this to boot. Now that we are booted, we can show off the Virtual Floppy feature. I have created a text file that we will turn into an image. Please note that you must create a separate folder for the files. Under Virtual Media, click on Create Image. Choose the folder with the files and where to save. Then click Create Image. Now that we have our file,  let’s mount it through the virtual media by choosing Map Removable Disk.

As we can see from the pop-up,  it is automatically mounted and accessible by the operating system. To wrap up, let’s take a look at the Remote File Share feature. From the GUI, if we click on Virtual Media and scroll down,  we can see the RFS settings.  For this example, I have already set up a share  containing the support live image. We will also be using the RACADM command remote image. The C switch is for connect. The U switch is for user.

The P switch is for password and the L switch is for the location. After pressing Enter, we should see the message,  “Remote Image is now Configured”.  If we refresh our GUI page, we should be able to see the RFS settings are now filled out.

As an example, let’s see the error we get when trying to use virtual media now. As you can see, we must manually disconnect the RFS session. Please be aware of this if you are trying to use virtual media  and you get this error.  Now that we have disabled RFS, let’s try the virtual media again. subtitle64 And now it connects.

Thank you for viewing our iDRAC training video on virtual media.