OpenManage Enterprise Adds the Troubleshoot Option
Fri, 02 Dec 2022 16:26:32 -0000
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What happens when you can’t get the restaurant staff’s attention? You have an error in connecting to the servers! That can also happen when discovering new servers in OpenManage Enterprise.
Fortunately, OpenManage Enterprise 3.9 has added a built-in troubleshooting toolkit to help diagnose problems during device discovery. This feature tests connectivity from the management appliance across the network to the managed devices.
When onboarding a fleet of devices, such a group of iDRACs into OpenManage Enterprise, when a discovery job completes, if any devices are missing, how can administrators identify the problem? For example, how can they quickly check whether the SNMP is enabled and configured correctly on a remote iDRAC? How can they make sure they're using the right credentials for an iDRAC, or how do they know if OpenManage Enterprise can communicate with the target devices on the network? These difficulties and many other errors can now be resolved using the OpenManage Enterprise embedded troubleshooting option.
When you log into the OpenManage Enterprise console, you can find the embedded troubleshooting commands in the monitor menu. To run a test, select “troubleshooting” then enter the problem device IP address or hostname. Troubleshooting can start with a simple ping, then select the required protocol for deeper investigation, as shown here.
Beyond the basic ping that ensures that the target host can be “seen” on the network, the integrated troubleshooting also supports various protocols. Examples of these include WSMAN, REDFISH, and SNMP for testing the remote SNMP service and the community name on iDRACs. Operating system connectivity tests are also included, such as SSH for Windows and Linux.
If a device cannot be reached, this might be caused by a firewall. To ensure that the correct ports are open, see the section Supported protocols and ports in OpenManage Enterprise in the OpenManage Enterprise 3.9 User's Guide which lists the required TCP/IP ports, with details about traffic direction and usage.
The goal is to have any server’s managed state be “Managed with Alerts”, as shown here. This state means that the discovery has completed successfully: the device is recognized as a server, and the SNMP service on the iDRAC has been configured correctly to send event traps to the OpenManage Enterprise management appliance.
In my role as a technical marketing engineer, I now regularly guide customers to this embedded troubleshooting tool to diagnose problems. This has often been a major step in understanding configuration issues and resolving any device discovery difficulties rapidly.
Resources
Learn more at: Support for Dell OpenManage Enterprise
Author: Mark Maclean, OpenManage Technical Marketing Engineering