Deployment Solution for Dell Servers assumes that users will be using statically configured IP addresses for their DRAC and IPMI cards. While this may be beneficial to some users, most of us probably would prefer to use DHCP and place IP reservations on our DHCP servers for our DRAC and BMC cards. This article shows you how to do this from start to finish.

Prerequisites: Deployment Solution for Dell Servers version 2.0 or newer, on DS 6.5 SP1 or newer.

Step 1: Disable tokenization in your capture DRAC or capture BMC configuration file job.

Locate your Linux DRAC capture job:

Figure 1

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Double click on the run script task and then click modify. Find the following section.

# ******************************************************************
# *                USER MODIFICATION BEGIN
# ******************************************************************

	declare -x DDP_CFG_FILE=""
	declare -x TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=""

# ******************************************************************
# *                USER MODIFICATION END
# ******************************************************************

Change the variable "TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE" to false.

	declare -x TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE="false"

Save the file, and close. Next locate your Linux BMC capture job:

Figure 2

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Double click on the run script task and then click modify. Find the following section.

# ******************************************************************
# *                USER MODIFICATION BEGIN
# ******************************************************************

	declare -x DDP_CFG_FILE=""
	declare -x TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=""

# ******************************************************************
# *                USER MODIFICATION END
# ******************************************************************

Change the variable "TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE"

	declare -x TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE="FALSE"

Save the file and close.

We will now edit the WinPE scripts in a similar manner. Locate your WinPE DRAC capture job, open the script and find the following section.

:: ------------------------------------------------------------------
:: -- USER MODIFICATION - BEGIN
:: ------------------------------------------------------------------

	set DDP_CFG_FILE=
	set TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=

:: ------------------------------------------------------------------
:: -- USER MODIFICATION - END
:: ------------------------------------------------------------------

Change the variable "TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE"

set TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=FALSE

Save the file and close.

Locate your WinPE BMC capture job, open the script and find the following section.

:: ------------------------------------------------------------------
:: -- USER MODIFICATION - BEGIN
:: ------------------------------------------------------------------

	set DDP_CFG_FILE=
	set TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=

:: ------------------------------------------------------------------
:: -- USER MODIFICATION - END
:: ------------------------------------------------------------------

Change the variable "TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE"

set TOKENIZE_CFG_FILE=FALSE

This will make it so that whenever you capture a configuration file, Deployment Solution won't bother pulling an IP address out of the pool of IP ranges.

Step 2: Enable DHCP in your system configuration file.

Perform a "Get All Configuration Files" using either Linux or WinPE (We'll be using Linux in this example).

Figure 3

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Once the job has completed, we need to edit the DRAC and BMC configuration file. Open the Configuration utility by going to Tools->Altiris Tools-> Configuration files.

Figure 4

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Click on your server model and click "Edit Configuration File", select the option that has "BMC" in it. Once the text file has been opened find the line "ipaddrsrc=static" and change it to "ipaddrsrc=DHCP". Save the file and close.

Note: You can also find a similar setting in the DRAC configuration.

Step 3: Configure your DHCP server

Depending on what type of DHCP server you are using, the process of making reservations for specific MAC addresses will be different. In this example I will be using Microsoft DHCP.

Open Microsoft DHCP, and find the folder named "Reservations" in the left pane. Right click it and select "New Reservation".

Figure 5

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Enter the MAC address for the BMC or DRAC card and provide an IP address for it. Click add, and close Microsoft DHCP.

Step 4: Configure the DRAC or BMC card using the Configure job.

Figure 6

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Once the machine has been configured to use DHCP instead of static, you're done. You can now access your DRAC or BMC as if it were statically configured, and you no longer have to maintain any entries in the IP ranges tab of the Configuration utility.