Setting up Dell OMSA (Openmanage Server admin) on Vmware ESXI 5.x (Guide)

Hello internetz

I recently bought a dell 2950 for my home lab and decided to slap esxi on it and this is a guide on how to install OSMA 7.4 on ESXI 5.x

Note:

At the time of the writing the latest installable version for ESXI is 5.5 update1 this version had issues with the OMSA agent due to a VMware bug, please update to the latest patch to get it up and running



http://en.community.dell.com/support-forums/servers/f/177/t/19581502.aspx


Procedure – Summary

• Download the relevant packages - Link
• Enter the ESXI host to maintenance mode & Enable EXSI shell and SSH
• Install OSMA agent on the EXSI host
• Reboot
• Exit maintenance mode

On your workstation or server

• Install Dell open manager server administrator on your client PC or a sever
• Connect to with the ESXI host IP and host login credentials

Download the relevant packages

OSMA for various operating systems can be downloaded from the Dell website

Link


In this case we are using –

Dell OpenManage 7.4 for ESXi 5.5 VIB (ESXI Agent)

Dell OpenManage 7.4 for Microsoft Windows x64 (Management Console)



Enter the ESXI host to maintenance mode

Using ssh

SSH in to the host server and run the following command

esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable true

Using the VSphere client

Installing OSMA agent on the EXSI host

Transfer the Zip file to the host server using winscp

I used the following location

 /var/log/vmware

You can use the data stores but I find this much easier

Install the VIB file

esxcli software vib install –d "/var/log/vmware/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-7.4.0-876.VIB-ESX55i_A00.zip"

If you transferred the file to a data store

esxcli software vib install -d "/vmfs/volumes/Datastore/DirectoryName/PatchName.zip" 

Reboot the server

Reboot –f

Make sure the services are up and running

etc/init.d/./wsman status

It should return: openwsmand is running

etc/init.d/./sfcbd status

It should return: sfcbd is running

etc/init.d/./hostd status

It should return: hostd is running


Exit maintenance mode

Shell –

esxcli system maintenanceMode set --enable false

Installing the management console

Download the respective package for your workstation/Server and install it.
I installed the Dell OpenManage 7.4 for Microsoft Windows x64 on my workstation running windows 8.1
Open the application it will take you to a web interface

Login using the host server IP and credentials

Important-

Remember to select “ignore certificate issues” otherwise the login will timeout with the error
Login failed....
Connection timeout