Dell OpenManage Server Admin on PVE host

tin

Renowned Member
Aug 14, 2010
107
2
83
Northwest NSW, Australia
Has anyone managed to install Dell OMSA 6.3 on Proxmox VE?

If yes, how did you do it?
 
Yes, I did it, but only for dellomsa 5.5, and I am not entirely satisfied, so I did it only on a node of my cluster. The problem is that each time I run 'apt-get update', I get a warning message :
W: GPG error: http://ftp.sara.nl dell Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 61872CD922D16719
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

It is probably not very important, but annoying.
Beside this, it is very simple to install Dell OpenManage, because there a repositiry avalaible. You just add it to /etc/apt/source.list :
# Dell Open Manage
deb http://ftp.sara.nl/pub/sara-omsa dell sara

and you have to install it with :
Code:
apt-get update
apt-get install dellomsa

But now, there is an official 6.3 package for Ubuntu, so perhaps, you should try this one, as I certainly will :
http://en.community.dell.com/dell-b...010/07/27/dell-openmanage-6-3-for-ubuntu.aspx

Alain
 
Yes, I did it, but only for dellomsa 5.5, and I am not entirely satisfied, so I did it only on a node of my cluster. The problem is that each time I run 'apt-get update', I get a warning message :
W: GPG error: http://ftp.sara.nl dell Release: The following signatures couldn't be verified because the public key is not available: NO_PUBKEY 61872CD922D16719
W: You may want to run apt-get update to correct these problems

It is probably not very important, but annoying.

you just need to add their release key so you system can check if the packages are original. sad but true that Dell does not tell you howto on their pages nor they provide the key on a obvious place. So I assume its up to you to open a support call on dell - or use their community forums.

UPDATE:
does this help:
Code:
wget -O- "http://ftp.sara.nl/debian_sara.asc" | apt-key add -
 
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My server is unfortunately too new for the sara versions. I need 6.2 or 6.3 for the hardware involved :(

I tried to mangle the Ubuntu ones on too, but got stuck with the dependency issues. Apparently on Squeeze you can just add the libsmbios2 package from Ubuntu and it works, but not on Lenny. Is it possible/safe to upgrade to Squeeze from the install created by the PVE ISO?

Would be awesome if OMSA 6.4 comes out with Debian packages - but I suspect that's being a bit optimistic :p
 
UPDATE:
does this help:
Code:
wget -O- "http://ftp.sara.nl/debian_sara.asc" | apt-key add -

Yes it it helps :
Code:
hertz:~# wget -O- "http://ftp.sara.nl/debian_sara.asc" | apt-key add -
--2010-12-03 10:06:57--  http://ftp.sara.nl/debian_sara.asc
Resolving ftp.sara.nl... 145.100.29.132
Connecting to ftp.sara.nl|145.100.29.132|:80... connected.
HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK
Length: 1718 (1.7K) [text/plain]
Saving to: `STDOUT'

100%[===========================================================================================>] 1,718       --.-K/s   in 0s

2010-12-03 10:06:57 (111 MB/s) - `-' saved [1718/1718]

OK
And after that, apt-get update does not issue any message error. Thanks for the hint !

Alain

P.S : I agree with Tin that it would be useful to have such a repository available for Dell OMSA 6.3, as I have more recent servers (PE R710 with Perc 6/i is the more recent) with Proxmox...
 
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My server is unfortunately too new for the sara versions. I need 6.2 or 6.3 for the hardware involved :(

I tried to mangle the Ubuntu ones on too, but got stuck with the dependency issues. Apparently on Squeeze you can just add the libsmbios2 package from Ubuntu and it works, but not on Lenny. Is it possible/safe to upgrade to Squeeze from the install created by the PVE ISO?

Would be awesome if OMSA 6.4 comes out with Debian packages - but I suspect that's being a bit optimistic :p

no, you cannot upgrade to Squeeze. the upcoming Proxmox VE 2.0 will be based on Squeeze, but this is not available yet.

Dell support for Debian: the more people request the earlier it could happen - so force Dell for doing it or just use another Supplier with Debian support.
 
Which one? Can you suggest a well known supplier with debian support? So far I've seen a wide range of M$Os support, many specify a VMWare support, and some tell about specific version of Red Hat or SuSE support, but never encountered a "Debian support" one. Not that I've much experience, being almost an hobbist, but I'm really interested in being able to have a secure choice if I have to suggest a server to a client of mine. I can't take the risk of buying one and discover that does not work.
 
This is getting to be maddening. I love your PVE offering but if I cannot get a simple reading of the RAID hardware it may not work for me. Why is it SO HARD to install Dell OpenManage on a Debian Linux?

I just wish you have chosen CentOS...
 
we are living in a free world, just choose whatever you want. but think: you blame us because Dell is not supporting one of the latest and greatest Linux distributions (Debian) - and additionally, you paid Dell but not one cent to the Proxmox VE project ..

and finally, most others can get it to work, so maybe you should try it again.
 
Tom,

1. I did not blame you for this. I said "why is it so hard for OMSA to get installed on Debian".
2. I am very grateful for your PVE offering as I mentioned before it is great and nothing less.
3. All I am saying is that I wish that you have chosen CentOS as your linux flavor of choice for the underlying OS. I tried all around installing OMSA 5.5, 6.0.1, 6.3 and it does not work. Everything out there is a bunch of patchworks and workarounds to something basic. In CentOS this would have been a non issue. Even the .deb packages that are now available officially from Dell are only intended to support Ubuntu and not really meant for Debian.

I even tried going on the LSI website as I have PERC 6/iR which is an LSI chip - but this does not work either.

I may give it another try but perhaps I should just wait until someone streamlines it better for a Debian OS... we'll see.
 
As you are a Dell customer you should ask Dell how to install their software. You are welcome here but you are probably asking the wrong guys ...

Out of topic:
CentOS: this is not a distribution like Debian, its only a 100 % copy of Redhat.
Debian is the only free open source distribution, all others are dominated by a single company so Debian is by far the best distribution to build a special distribution like Proxmox VE.
 
Ok, I got everything installed properly except I cannot see the website at the https://<IP>:1311/ any ideas?

Also, do you think the Dell OMSA will work if I try to install it inside an OpenVZ container?
 
Ah, ok. I just figured it out. I tried to install the newer OpenManage, version 6 and it does not work. If you revert back to version 5.5 it works. However, I am still not able to see my storage controller which is the reason I installed this to begin this. Any ideas anyone?
 
Also, do you think the Dell OMSA will work if I try to install it inside an OpenVZ container?

Did you end up trying this? Would be cool if it does work... But I'm guessing it won't.

Edit: I just tried a Ubuntu 10.10 container. Connected to the web interface fine, but as I expected, it can't see the hardware :(

Compounding the frustration is that I can't leave a comment on Dell's community website because the community signup system is broken, and they're still not answering emails about it. GRRRR.
 
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I was finally able to make this thing work. After updating all the firmware all around (BIOS and SAS Controller) and installing the debian. I used the OMSA offered by the sara repository. Now here is the trick you can only use the really old OMSA ver 5.5 with debian. That is the only one that worked for me. Then you need to make sure some driver is started before you start all the internal daemons that run the data collectors for OMSA - only then you will see partial info on your SAS Raid Controller.

I must say, this is such a HACK it is not even funny. All these talks on how apt-get is so wonderful if you don't have support from hardware vendors, it is virtually worthless. I spent 2 days on this and had to trash a machine in the process to a point that I need to rebuild this Proxmox node in order to feel comfortable again.

One thing I must say, Proxmos is running smooth and working very well. Once you push out the High Availability feature into this product it will really take off. This is a great product! (on a sucky distro)

Full Disclosure: I'm a big CentOS/RedHat guy and truly believe in Open Source projects that are backed by large corporations (RedHat).
 
...All these talks on how apt-get is so wonderful if you don't have support from hardware vendors, it is virtually worthless.
...
This is a great product! (on a sucky distro)
Hi,
I mean this is not an failure of debian (i like debian much more than any rpm-based distro) - this is the fail of dell!! This is one reason why i try to don't use dell servers.

Udo
 
!!!!GOOD NEWS!!!!

I found a blog article about running OMSA 6.3 on Lenny this morning... And it worked perfectly (apart from the author missing one deb file from the Ubuntu repos).
http://gloriousoblivion.blogspot.com/2010/12/running-dell-omsa-63-under-debian-lenny.html

One word of warning though - I would recommend not attempting this on production servers unless you are 100% sure of what each and every command is going to do, and why you need to do them.
 
Only problem there is you're stuck with 5.5... Useless when you have hardware only supported in higher versions.
 

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