XenServer 6.5 SP1, Dell OpenManage and SNMP.

I've written before about XenServer 6.2, Dell OpenManager and SNMP and XenServer 6.1, Dell OpenManage and SNMP. I'm happy to report that the steps also work on XenServer 6.5 SP1 with very few modifications.

XenServer 6.2, Dell OpenManage and SNMP

I've written before about XenServer 6.1, Dell OpenManage and SNMP. I'm happy to report that the exact same steps also work on XenServer 6.2 SP1.

XenServer 6.1, Dell OpenManage and SNMP

I finally updated our productive environment to XenServer 6.1. The upgrade went without a hitch, but there are still many issues with Windows VMs and the XenTools. In the end completely removing the XenTools and reinstalling them did the trick.

Anyway, this post is about Dell OpenManage and SNMP. I've found a spot-on post in the Citrix forums here - thanks Josh Phillips. Read on for the details.

XenServer 5.6 and Dell OpenManage 6.5

Citrix recently released XenServer 5.6 Service Pack 2. While you probably have found out already, that upgrading from XenServer 5.6 FP1 only works through XenCenter and not by booting from the ISOs, those of you running XenServer on Dell boxes might appreciate some pointers in getting OMSA up and running again.

Dell actually recognizes XenServer as an operating system for their servers, so there is an ISO that can be used as supplemental pack when XenServer is installed. Yay! The same ISO can be used to install it on an existing system. Instructions can be found here, at Dell's Enterprise Technology Center. This site also has directions where the latest OMSA download can be found, so check it out!

I had OpenManagae 6.4 installed on all of my XenServers prior to upgrading them to 5.6 SP2. The installer failed because some conflicting packages were already installed. So I basically had to remove OMSA 6.4 before I could install 6.5. To save you the hassle of identifying the individual packages, here's how to get rid of it quickly:

yum remove srvadmin-smweb srvadmin-smcommon srvadmin-omilcore srvadmin-sm srvadmin-iws libsmbios sblim-sfcc

 After running the install.sh script on the downloaded ISO, it is necessary to bounce the srvadmin services by issuing:

/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/srvadmin-services stop
/opt/dell/srvadmin/sbin/srvadmin-services start

Thanks to jh for pointing out the mistake. 

XenServer and Dell OMSA - addendum

As I've written here it is indeed possible to install Dell OMSA on a XenServer 5.6 host without DDK. I've taken a brand new Dell R710 machine and decided to give it a go.
After I followed the instrcutions I encountered some weird issues though. The OMSA Webinterface was buggy, and only a few sensors were available.

For instance

# omreport chassis temps
Error! No temperature probes found on this system.

certainly didn't seem right. After some googling I thought I found the cuplrit in missing modules, namely dcdbas and dcdipm. I found only dcdbas was present, but not loaded:

# modprobe -l -v|grep dcd
/lib/modules/2.6.27.42-0.1.1.xs5.6.0.44.111158xen/kernel/drivers/firmware/dcdbas.ko

Loading it didn't help though. After more googling I found that openipmi is required, but isn't being installed during the OMSA install. So I installed it, restarted all omsa services and everything works fine:

# omreport chassis temps
Temperature Probes Information

------------------------------------
Main System Chassis Temperatures: Ok
------------------------------------

Index : 0
Status : Ok
Probe Name : System Board Ambient Temp
Reading : 28.0 C
Minimum Warning Threshold : 8.0 C
Maximum Warning Threshold : 42.0 C
Minimum Failure Threshold : 3.0 C
Maximum Failure Threshold : 47.0 C