PowerEdge: iDRAC Recovery Procedure with firmimg.d7 or firmimgFIT.d9

The purpose of this article is to recover an iDRAC that is unable to boot, without replacing any parts. This tutorial works for iDRAC7, iDRAC8, iDRAC9.

Sometimes the iDRAC boot partition might become corrupt. iDRAC fails to boot, and the server cannot be managed by it.

Symptoms:

• iDRAC is not ready during server POST.
• Unable to access iDRAC web page.
• System Health and Identify LED is flashed at ~1/2 second rate. (LED is located on the back of a rack and tower servers and on the front of a blade server.)

iDRAC models per PowerEdge server Generation

• iDRAC7 on 12G PowerEdge systems
• iDRAC8 on 13G PowerEdge systems
• iDRAC9 on 14G PowerEdge systems

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Recovering the iDRAC

iDRAC supports two operating system images to ensure a bootable iDRAC. If an unforeseen catastrophic error causing the loss of both boot paths:

• iDRAC boot loader detects that there is no bootable image.
• System Health and Identify LED is flashed at ~1/2 second rate. (LED is located on the back of a rack and tower servers and on the front of a blade server.
• The boot loader is now polling the SD card slot.

Solution

1. Download the correct iDRAC image for your server model. See below section "Locating the correct iDRAC image" to help find the image file
2. Format an SD card with FAT using a Windows operating system, or EXT3 using a Linux operating system
3. Copy firmimg.d7 or firmimgFIT.d9 to the SD card
4. Insert the SD card into the server
5. The boot loader detects the SD card, turns the flashing LED to solid amber, reads the firmware image file, reprograms iDRAC, and then reboots iDRAC. Wait 2-5 minutes, this operation completes automatically

Locating the correct iDRAC image

1. Go to the Dell Support site (https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us) to download the appropriate iDRAC image for your server model
2. Find your server model, for example by service tag, or model number (example R720, R630, R740,…)
3. Click "Drivers & Downloads"
4. Under the category, select "iDRAC with Lifecycle Controller"
5. Click the "iDRAC…" package name and then click "View full driver details"
6. Download the file with file format "Application." Typically the file name is iDRAC_version.exe
7. Run the downloaded package on a Windows computer to extract this archive and obtain the iDRAC image file
8. The image file is extracted in the selected folder. Look for a file named firmimg.d7, or firmimgFIT.d9 (depending on whether this is for iDRAC7, iDRAC8 (both using .d7) or iDRAC9 (.d9). This file can be used to update or recover an iDRAC

Alternative method using TFTP Server
You can use Trivial File Transfer Protocol (TFTP) server to upgrade or downgrade iDRAC firmware or install certificates. It is used in SM-CLP and RACADM command-line interfaces to transfer files to and from iDRAC. The TFTP server must be accessible using an iDRAC IP address or DNS name. 
 
You can use the netstat -a command on Windows or Linux operating systems to see if a TFTP server is running. The default port for TFTP is 69. If a TFTP server is not running, do one of the following:

Find another computer on the network running a TFTP service. Install a TFTP server on the operating system.

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