Dell Management Console Powered By Altiris Issues
I have been experimenting with the Dell Management Console that is powered by Altiris. I thought it could be a useful way to help manage my Dell systems and such. I have been hearing reports of random Blue Screen (BSOD) issues and from what I am told by my technicians in the buildings that it seems to be a problem with the Altiris Client or Dell Management Client associated with the Dell Management Console. I am also told it only seems to be affecting certain Model computers. The models that seem to be affected are all Dell Optiplex 740 models. The have BIOSes varying from 1.1.3 all the way up to the latest which is 2.1.9. It was because of our systems having outdated BIOSes that I wanted to use this Dell Managment console.
The other issue that seems to be related to this is that on our servers running Server 2003 the servers seem to hang after a few days like there is a memory leak and rebooting them helps but it eventually comes back. I manually uninstalled the agents from a couple servers and they no longer hang.
DMC or DCM ?
I agree that BIOS likely need to be updated on all those Optiplexs, which is one reason to have a good systems management tool in place.
First, are you talking about the Dell Management Console (DMC) , or the Dell Client Manager (DCM) ? .... DMC is more server centric, and DCM being more client (Optiplex) centric.
For the DMC side, we've got a group here that can assist with answer questions - http://en.community.dell.com/groups/dell_management_console/default.aspx ... it's monitored by the developers so would be the best place to get eyeballs looking at your problem.
I've had DMC installed in the lab for quite some time, but haven't used it extensively in production ... but no blue screens to date.
- Scott
Dell TechCenter
Dell Client Manager
I am using Dell Client Manager 3.0. I am in the early stages of discoverimng clients and installing the Altiris Client and Dell Management Client. From what I am told since I started doing this randmom BSOD's on the computers in my schools. I have asked for details from the BSOD but I am told the data on the Blue Screen is not the same. I am trying to get more info.
Ok How about this?
Since I am getting weird reports of BSODs and other weird issues when the Dell Client Manager Agents are installed what about creating BIOS update and BIOS modification exe packages through Dell Client Configuation Utility (DCCU) and creating tasks in Altiris Deployment Solution 6.9 to distribute them. All I really want to do is have an easier way to update BIOSes on my clients and maybe even make some configuration changes like to enable PXE, WOL and assign a password to the BIOS.
How would one go about taking that EXE that DCCU compiles and using Altiris to launch it. I tried but it seems to error out with a Status Code 3
Since my BIOSes are password protected I have to create the package through DCCU so that the password can be embedded.
My experience
When you say you received a Status Code was that with a BIOS configuration file. If so that indicates that some configuration setting did not work. If you go to the machine it was run on you should find a TaskResult.xml file in c:\windows\temp. Open it and look at each line for the setting that returned an error.
What I have done is use the DCCU inventory utility on a machine I've configured. Then import the TaskResult.xml file created by it into DCCU and uncheck the settings I do not need to configure. And create the exe from that.
One caveat, If you create a configuration that works on a machine with a newer bios then apply it to the same model with an older bios version you may receive a error code as mentioned before because older bioses may not have all the features of newer ones.
As far as BIOS upgrades, using DCCU I've created upgrade packes for GX620s and 740s. Then using Altiris DC 6.9, pushed them out to machines. I rolled it out in small batches and got to about 130 machines out of 900. I stoped at 130 because on my last batch 2 of the machines were fried from the BIOS flash and I had to replace the MBs.
I've seen on here where others are not repackaging the BIOS upgrade file but using it directly with a -nopause switch. I haven't tried it yet but I will.
For me, BIOS upgrades need to be 100% successful as BIOS failure is not an acceptable risk.
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