Comments on: Dell DRAC 5 – DCRAP 5

By: Neil

Neil — Mon, 30 Jan 2012 02:20:56 +0000

Well here we are in Jan-2012 and I’ve been using DRAC 5 on 2950′s for the last 14 months without any issues at all. No resets required, the console is Java so works from Firefox and Internet Explorer (but no longer use IE 6!) I also use DRAC 6 which does have a lot more features, but DRAC 5 has been fine. Maybe the newer firmware is now much better?

By: john

john — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 13:33:44 +0000

We just upgraded all of ours to the latest firmware, which now (again) provides a java applet version of the console app – which actually works! We’ve also not had any stop responding and need rebooting for a long time.

So some of the problems are sorted.

We’ve also found that you can interact with them using ipmi tools, rather than having to install all their awful Linux stuff. Which is nice.

They’re not great, but they’re getting better.

By: chris

chris — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 08:36:24 +0000

I hear you guys, my management recently made the wise decision to switch from HP to Dell servers and they are a living nightmare! The DRAC is absolute garbage and ours are continually failing, all firmware is up to date yet the active x plugin no longer works.

They are CRAP!!!

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 18:02:16 +0000

Clearly @chuckaman, you’re using DRAC4.

DRAC5 with their crappy-ass active-x-based console xidget is an unspeakable nightmare.

We have thousands of the damn things, and I have yet to EVER get a console by way of DRAC on a single one of them. They’re WORSE than useless, because management thinks they’re great (even though it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that they’re a piece of crap — i’ve never figured out what bone they take out of managers head that allows them to be looking directly at something that’s NOT working, and be convinced it somehow is. Literally, the response has been ‘well you must just have the settings on that one set up differently’, even though they’ve been shown the same thing again and again.)

By: chukaman

chukaman — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:17:26 +0000

I’m stunned. I have only one issue with our DRACs and am ok with that issue given how useful these things are in an emergency. The issue is that whether I use the correct JVM or not I still can’t get the console to work with any browser on OSX.

I absolutely can’t live with the machines having DRACs. The sales guy sold us four machines the other day without DRACs and they are like the black sheep that everybody hates.

By: Robert

Robert — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 00:14:10 +0000

Compared to HP iLO, IBM RAC the Dell DRAC’s are a bloody nightmare even for windows installers at least if your trying to do it through ssh port tunneling by SSHing into the drac card directly the main problem is the DRAC5 cards seem to underpowered to manage both the SSH tunnels and clicking on things in the web interface.

By: Steve Francis

Steve Francis — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 15:39:10 +0000

Having managed lots of these DRACs in production, they are fine, but have limitations you have to accept (if you are buying from Dell). One of the limitations being that they need to be periodically reset.
So you have leave SSH open so you can ssh to the DRAC, do a drac-admin reset, and then SSL will work. For a while.

By: Harald

Harald — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 21:23:29 +0000

I have seen the exact same behaviour on my servers here. I can access the console sometimes with IE6 but after some time that quits working as well. So far I haven’t contacted DELL support about it but I am always reluctant to contact any customer support line…

If someone knows a fix, please let us know!

cheers,
Harald

By: Lam

Lam — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 07:54:54 +0000

Actually, DRAC3 required you to install some trojan horse (supporting only few systems), exposing a VNC server. It couldn’t be used to access BIOS, which is the thing I’m using remote consoles for.

I haven’t seen the 4th iteration of DRAC, but DRAC5 isn’t so bad at it (they finally managed to make the console redirection all hardware). I can’t use it myself (“** this browser is not compatible with the Digital Video Viewer”), but I’ve seen it under Windows and from the green screens I assume it’s a rebranded Avocent software (Dell has a long history of rebranding Avocent remote console software for their remote console switches, which we have to use with crappy DRAC3). Now all there’s left is downloading the original, which for sure is supporting more OS-es and browsers.

By: Steve

Steve — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 19:15:26 +0000

No shit, man. This is the least well thought out piece of production hardware I’ve ever seen. If, like me, you’re in a hard core unix shop, you’re just screwed.