Dell™ PowerEdge™ M610 Technical Guidebook
II. Lifecycle Controller / Unified Server Configurator
Embedded management is comprised of several pieces which are very interdependent.
•Lifecycle Controller
•Unified Server Configurator
•iDRAC6
•vFLASH
Lifecycle controller is the hardware component that powers the embedded management features. It is integrated and tamperproof storage for
Dell Unified Server Configurator is a 1:1 user interface exposing utilities from Lifecycle Controller. Customers will use this interface to configure hardware, update server, run diagnostics, or deploy the operating system. This utility resides on Lifecycle Controller. To access the Unified Server Configurator, press <F10> key within 10 seconds of the Dell logo display during the system boot process. Current functionality enabled by the Unified Server Configurator includes:
feature
description
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Faster O/S | Drivers and the installation utility are embedded on system, so no need to | |
Installation | scour DELL.COM | |
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Faster System Updates | Integration with Dell support automatically directed to latest versions of | |
the Unified Server Configurator | ||
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More Comprehensive | Diagnostic utilities are embedded on system | |
Diagnostics | ||
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Simplified Hardware | Detects RAID controller and allows user to configure virtual disk and | |
choose virtual disk as boot device, eliminating the need to launch a | ||
Configuration | ||
separate utility | ||
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III. iDRAC6 Express/Enterprise
For the M610, all features of both the iDRAC6 Express and Enterprise are included with each server. The iDRAC6 is a managed persistent storage space for server provisioning data and consists of 1GB flash and VFlash. VFlash offers the
•Unified Server Configurator Browser and System Services Module (SSM) (25MB): The Unified
Server Configurator browser provides a consistent graphical user interface for bare metal deployment and is ideal for
•Service Diagnostics (15MB): Formerly on the hard drive as the Utility Partition, this is a bootable
FAT16 partition for Service Diagnostics
•Deployment OS Embedded Linux (100MB): Storage space to hold embedded Linux
•Deployment OS WinPE (200MB): Storage space to hold Windows Preinstallation Environment
•Driver Store (150MB): Holds all files required for OS deployment
•iDRAC6 firmware (120MB): Holds the two most recent versions of iDRAC6 firmware
•Firmware Images (160MB): Holds the two most recent versions of BIOS, RAID, embedded
NIC, power supplies, and hard drive firmware. This partition also holds the BIOS and option ROM configuration data
•Life Cycle Log (2MB): Stores initial factory configuration as well as all detectable hardware and firmware changes to the server since its deployment. The Life Cycle Log is stored on the BMC SPI flash
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