dell_ramabisa: Hi folks, The general introduction on CMC. CMC is Chassis Management Controller Placed in M1000e chassis will help manage all the blade servers and Chassis infrastructure such as IOMs, FANs and PSUs
Dell-Saritha: The Dell Chassis Management Controller (CMC) is a systems management component designed to manage one or more Dell PowerEdge systems containing blade servers. Unlike a tower or rack server, a blade server cannot run by itself; it requires a compatible blade enclosure. What makes it compelling to many customers is that blade servers are typically optimized to minimize the use of physical space and energy while still providing ample computing power.
dell-pradeep: @edy more info on IOA can be found here - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2012/10/11/deploy-and-manage-the-poweredge-m-i-o-aggregator-switch-using-the-chassis-management-controller.aspx
dell_ramabisa: There are two CMCs for high availablity in case of any problems with any CMC.
Mohd: Hello all
Dell TechCenter: Hi Mohd.
Dell-Vinod: hi mohd welcome
Dell TechCenter: WelcomE!
edy: noted n thanks
dell-pradeep: @edy welcome
Shahrimin Zulkifli: Greetings from brunei
Dell TechCenter: Any question > Mohd?
dell-pradeep: Greetings
Dell TechCenter: Welcom! From Brunei?
Dell TechCenter: We are welcome to have any question.
Dell-Saritha: The latest firmware of PowerEdge M1000e CMC 4.5 is here : http://www.dell.com/support/drivers/us/en/19/driverdetails?driverid=D2KPX
Dell-Saritha: Has anyone used CMC4.5?
dell-pradeep: for more of the introductory details the following link will also help - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/systems-management/w/wiki/4767.cmc-for-m1000e.aspx
Mohd: We are looking to buy new server, one option is blade
dell_ramabisa: Some of the good features in CMC include Blade cloning, Multi Chassis Management, DRM based Server Update or single click update, Quick Deploy of Blades/iDRACs, Enhance Cooling mode for Gen3 fans etc
Dell TechCenter: Thanks Mohd!
dell_ramabisa: Blade cloning or Blade profile replication where you can replicate one blade configuration to other blades in Chassis
dell-pradeep: @Mohd - CMC supports different blade server configurations and you could choose specific blade server depending on your consolidation plans and based on workload
dell-pradeep: blade servers provide a denser and consolidated solution
edy: this blade cloning I guess only for the config.. isnt it?
Mark Anthony: hi everyone.
Gwen Salvilla: Hi Mark
Dell-Vinod: hi mark, welcome
dell_ramabisa: Multi Chassis Management is a feature where CMC in leader chassis takes a leader role and manages 8 more Chassis
Third: hi everyone
edy: not relate to entire server O/S and data cloning..
dell-pradeep: @Mark @Gwen @Third hi
Dell TechCenter: Welcom Mark!
Gwen Salvilla: Hello Predeep
Dell TechCenter: Hi Third!
dell-pradeep: @edy blade cloning is for the blade server configuration
Mark Anthony: our CMC firmware version in 4.45, what if we want to update the firmware is there any downtime for that?
Gwen Salvilla: question
dell-yogeshwar: Hi Edy
dell-pradeep: @edy this includes nic, bios settings for example
Gwen Salvilla: how about Raid configurations?
dell_ramabisa: @ Mark, No server down time but Management will not be available during CMC firmware update
Mark Anthony: @dell, that's cool.
dell-yogeshwar: @edy: As you pointed correctly, blade cloning is not related to data in blade
Dell-Saritha: @Gwen Salvilla We have Dell PowerEdge VRTX platform, where Raid Configurations are supported
edy: how i wish it could .. :-\
dell-yogeshwar: :)
Mohd: Thanks Pradeep
dell-pradeep: @Mohd - welcome !
Dell TechCenter: PowerEdger VRTX http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/06/07/dell-poweredge-vrtx-launch-technical-wrap-up.aspx
dell_ramabisa: The other latest coolest feature in CMC 4.5 is to update all blade components with a single click in CMC
Dell-Saritha: We have some interesting features in CMC4.5 To address the complexity and costs associated with System Updates, in CMC 4.5 Dell offers the one to many system update solution using the Dell Repository Manager.
DELL_Yugesh: The One to many update feature simplifies the update using customizable-bundle firmware, so that your system administrators can deploy faster and more easily.
DELL_Yugesh: Update from a network share provides the flexibility to update all the 12G server components at the same time with a single catalog either from a CIFS(Common Internet Filesystem ) or from NFS (Network File System)Share.
dell-pradeep: @Gwen yes raid configuration profile is also exportable
dell_ramabisa: CMC 4.5 also supports Gen3 fans with Enhanced Cooling Mode Support.
dell_ramabisa: Enhanced Cooling Mode of Gen3 Fans will help chassis cooling needs of very high dense sevuers configurations
DELL_Yugesh: prior to CMC 4.5 to update firmware together for all servers in a chassis you must download the firmware individually and select the component (BIOS, LC, IDRAC, RAID, NIC and so on) location.
dell_ramabisa: The customer has option to enable/disable this Option
Dell-Vinod: @All - any questions so far??
DELL_Yugesh: Using the new feature in CMC 4.5 Firmware Update using Network Share mode you can export the inventory of all the servers in the chassis and provide this as input to Dell Repository Manager (DRM)to create customized repository of only the servers present in the chassis.
dell-pradeep: @gwen the exported profiles have different attributes and will not uncomment the attribs that need to cloned per your configuration
Mark Anthony: on the individual component update like BIOS, LC and etc so if we want to update like BIOS, no downtime? :) i keep on asking this since this is critical to us. tnx for reply.
DELL_Yugesh: @Mark: there will be downtime to update the BIOS
DELL_Yugesh: @Mark: you have an option to schedule the update just before rebooting your server
Dell-Saritha: @Mark there is no downtime to update LC
Mark Anthony: ok.
dell-pradeep: @everyone - with respect to cloning, CMC automates the cloning functionality through ConfigurationXML leveraging LifeCycleController on the blade servers, more info on server configuration using xml files and sample scripts are here - http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/b/techcenter/archive/2013/02/01/simplified-remote-server-configuration-through-configuration-xml-files-with-idrac7-and-lifecycle-controller-2-0.aspx
Dell-Saritha: @Mark: Once the updates are scheduled, the updates will be applied at the next reboot
dell_ramabisa: The other feature in CMC is Quick deploy - when a blade is inserted in to the chassis, iDRAC network will be configured, iDRAC root user will be configured. Blade profile will also be applied automatically after taking confirmation from LCD prompt
dell_ramabisa: This saves lot of time with deployment of the blades
dell_ramabisa: The other feature is flex address where the blade network components use CMC MAC addresses instead of Hardware MAC addresses
dell_ramabisa: This will help when a faulty blade is replaced
edy: slightly off-topics...but can we save our Chat session here.. or email what we've been discussed now?
edy: perhaps adobe spokeperson shall answer this...
Dell-Vinod: @edy- we will be uploading the chat transcript in dell tech center soon
edy: cool
Dell TechCenter: We will post this chat to community site later.
Dell-Saritha: Here's whitepaper on FlexAddress feature: http://media.community.dell.com/en/dtc/attach/flex_address_a01.pdf
Dell TechCenter: Please also follow twitter.com/DellBizSA
Dell TechCenter: We will post feature vevent info.
Dell-Saritha: helps solvesuch resource availability issues associated with changes in system configurations.FlexAddress simplifies management of network and storage resources in the data centers
Dell-Saritha: Since we have just another 5 minutes left of this chat, you could also post it on dell tech center
Dell-Saritha: if there are more questions on the features we explained..
edy: no more from me..
Dell TechCenter: Dell techcenter agin here http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/
Dell-Saritha: and in addition we have one more Tech Chat session planned
Mark Anthony: none for me..
edy: gtg.. take care u all
Mark Anthony: thanks dell_tech.
dell-pradeep: @edy good day
Dell-Saritha: on Open Manage Power Center
Dell TechCenter: Sarita, please tell them next one.
Mark Anthony: by all gtg..
Mark Anthony: have a great day.
chchan: Thank You
Mark Anthony: please email us the chat transcript.
Dell-Vinod: @all - how do think about this chat? was it useful?
Dell TechCenter: Please also check http://en.community.dell.com/techcenter/c/1.aspx
Dell TechCenter: for future chat.
dell-pradeep: @Mark and everyone good day
Mark Anthony: @vinod, yes it is usefull.
Dell TechCenter: Thanks for attanding!
Dell-Saritha: In next Chat will explain on Cool feature how to plan
Dell-Saritha: Data Center Power Requirements and manage power from CMC
Dell TechCenter: Oh Power Management from CMC great.
Dell-Saritha: Please watch out for this
Dell-Saritha: topic on dell tech center
Dell-Vinod: @all - please go back and try CMC 4.5, i am sure you will lot of interesting featutes..
Dell-Vinod: @all - we will have another session in next 2 weeks....you can come back to us on any questions you have
Dell-Saritha: How do you folks use PowerEdge M1000e CMC - general usage..?
Dell TechCenter: Thanks everyone for your participation.
Dell-Vinod: @all - thank you all for attending the chat
dell-pradeep: @everyone thanks for your participation, look forward to understanding your CMC usage and any more questions at the next chat 2 weeks from now
Dell TechCenter: We are going to have more this chat for APAC time
Mohd: Thanks Dell
Mark A.: thanks Dell
Dell TechCenter: Thank you!