Best Practice: iDRAC & NIC Selection

best practicesdrac

I am setting up a new Dell server with iDRAC 6 Express.

My options for the NIC are:

1) Shared
2) Shared with failover to LOM2
3) Shared with failover to all LOMs

The server has 4x LOMs.

My questions are thusly:

-What is best practice for setting this up? Is there any reason why I would not want option 3?

-If the NIC is being used for both iDRAC and the OS, (there is no dedicated iDRAC nic), does this ever cause any kinds of issues for either iDRAC or the OS?

Thanks-

-Josh

Best Answer

Depends on your network layout. If every LOM was connected to the same switch then option 3 would be the best. Most environments though have a dedicated management network, or LOMs that connect to public networks that the DRAC should never end up on. At one company all servers had three ethernet ports, one connected to the public network, one private and one management network. We usually configured the DRACs on the management network with failover to the private network.

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