Articles, Dell | Altiris

We are on the final lap. We have made a lot of progress over the past articles. Here is what we have talked about:

• Part 1: Installing the Dell Client Manager into Notification Server

• Part 2: Dell Monitoring Policy (the health check)

• Part 3: Dell BIOS Upgrade

• Part 4: Dell BIOS Profile

Updating the BIOS is great, but it is something that doesn't have to be done (unless it is a security update). Being able to actually control the settings in the BIOS is where the rubber meets the road. Using the Dell Client Manager you can control every little setting in your computer's BIOS. You can configure your laptop, your desktop, and even your server. It is a great tool.

Last December I decided that it was high time to update the BIOS on our Dell computers. I taught my employees all the steps that they needed to take update each computer's BIOS. It took a lot of time, and it was pretty mindless work. When everything was said and don't most of the computers were updated. In the end, a lot of time and money was wasted on the project. There has to be a better way, right?

One day I got a call from a frantic teacher. They told me that they were in front of a class and needed to get on the Internet to show their class something. The Internet was not working. They told me that their entire class revolved around getting access to the Internet. I decided that I needed to drop what I was doing and make my way to that teacher's classroom. Once I arrived I could see that the computer was having problems. I checked everything that I could think of to try and get the network working again. Finally I decided to check the devices on the computer. There was no network card listed. I decided that I needed to check the BIOS settings. I rebooted the computer, went into the BIOS, and started to check things out. Very quickly I found that someone had disabled the network card. I was pleased that was the problem, it is easy to fix. When I went to re-enable the network card the BIOS informed me that I needed the BIOS administrators password before I could do anything. I had never set a password. I then had to very quickly figure out how to set the password so I could help the teacher.

If you want to consolidate your storage into centralized arrays but don't want to spend all your budget on an expensive SAN system, iSCSI is the answer. iSCSI brings SAN functionality to Ethernet allowing you to simplify your data storage needs. Use this article to discover how to use the Linux preboot environment to deploy images to your iSCSI targets and configure your NIC firmware to boot iSCSI allowing your servers to run completely disk-less.

Deployment Server 6.9 adds the ability to remote control your clients from the Console using any remote control application you want. There are many free remote control options available. My personal preference is UltraVNC. It offers good performance, file transfer, video driver, encryption, MS logon, text chat, multiple-monitors-support, auto reconnection, and a few plugins.

Being able to perform out-of-band remote power control actions on a server can be a necessity in distributed environments. This article will walk you through some of power control's mysteries, such as power control types, how they are used, and a few tricks that can be pulled to make 10G hardware more easily accessible through the DS console.

Here are some more tips and tricks for those who use Deployment Solution for Dell Servers 3+ to manage their Dell Server hardware. This article builds on its predecessor, providing more shortcuts and clues on how to make your job easier as an IT manager over Dell systems.

The Linux preboot has been known to be fast at performing Bare Metal to OS installs under Deployment Solution for Dell Servers, but just when you thought it couldn't get any faster, it did. I can get these "cheeta" Bare Metal to OS jobs to execute in under 5 minutes without skipping any of the configuration steps. Use this step by step article to eliminate all reboots tasks in your deployment jobs saving time and network bandwidth and effectively making deployment up to twice to three times as fast. This job also greatly reduces PXE server strain allowing you to deploy more machines at once!

After using a product for awhile, you tend to learn a few tricks that save time. Unfortunately it may take you doing a certain action dozens of times before finding a better way. This article is meant to be a miscellaneous compilation of little tricks that I learned over time that save time and frustration when deploying machines with Deployment Solution for Dell Servers 3+.