Wednesday 12 October 2016

Dell iDRAC virtual media via remote console won't connect with error Channel Access Denied

Connecting the virtual media in a Dell iDRAC remote console fails with the error seen below. We had the latest firmware and tried the ActiveX and HTML5 consoles, but the problem was still there.


After inspecting the SSL certificate you can see that the date is invalid for some reason, we saw this on a new Dell server!

The solution is to reset the SSL certificate on the iDRAC with these commands:

racadm -r 192.168.0.120 -u root -p calvin sslresetcfg


racadm -r 192.168.0.120 -u root -p calvin racreset soft

Don't forget to change the iDRAC IP address, username and password to match your setup.
This process takes about 5-10 minutes to complete.

Monday 10 October 2016

Broadcom QLogic iSCSI and FCoE HBA listed in ESXi storage adapters

When ESXi 6.0 is installed into a server with Broadcom, now QLogic 10GbE network adapters, we see a stack of storage adapters in ESXi.

This can be a drain on resources and increase LUN scan times. It also makes the GUI pane messy.


You can stop these from loading by disabling the following modules in ESXi 6.0 from either SSH or the DCUI

esxcfg-module -d fcoe
esxcfg-module -d bnx2fc

esxcfg-module -d bnx2i

After a reboot you will see that the Storage Adapters list much smaller.