Dell iDRAC 6 Remote Console Connection Failed
I recently had the honor to fix a real annoying issue with the iDRAC on rather old DELL hardware, R710 servers that are stilling puling their weight. They have been upgraded to the latest firmware naturally and DELL allows access to those updates to anyone without the need for a support contract (happy users/customers).You can perfectly configure Java site exceptions and use Firefox or Chrome to connect to it (IE is different story, you can connect but the view is messed up). Anyway the browser isn’t the big issue. The problem was that Dell iDRAC 6 remote console connection failed consistently at the very last moment with “Connection Failed”
Note: are you nuts?
Yes I like 25/50/100Gbps RDMA, S2D, All Flash etc. I do live the vanguard live on the bleeding edge, but part of that is funding solutions that fit the environment. In this case. They have multiple spare servers and extra disks on top the ones they use in the lab or even in production. So even when a server or a component fails they can use that to fix it. They have the hands on and savvy staff members to do that. No problem. This is not an organization driven by fear of risk and responsibility but by results and effective TCO/ROI. They know very well what they can handle and what not. On top of that they know very well what part of IT sectors sales and marketing promises/predictions are FUD and which are reality. This means they can make decisions based on optimizing for their needs delivering real results.
Leveraging old hardware does mean that sometimes you’ll run into silly issues but annoying issues like older DRAC cards with modern client operating systems, browsers and recent Java versions.
Most tricks are to be found on line to get those to work together but sometimes even those fails. First of all make sure all network requirements are in order (ports, firewall etc) and on top of that:
- Upgraded the DRAC Firmware to the latest v2.85
- Add DRAC IP into the Java Exception List.
- Change Java Network Setting from Browser to Direct Connect
- Hack the Java config files
- Disable Encrypted Video on the DRAC
- Reset the DRAC
- On top of this you can run and older version of the browser and Java but at a certain point this becomes a silly option. You see at a given moment the entire stack as moved ahead and one trick like running an old version of Java won’t do it anymore and keeping a VM around that’s at a 10 year old tech/version level is a pain.
The missing piece for me: generate & upload SHA256 certs
So let me share you what extra step got the remote console of the DELL R710 iDRAC to work with the most recent version of Java, Windows 10 and the latest of the greatest Firefox browser at the time of writing.
The trick that finally did it is to generate a CSR on the DRAC while you are connected to it. You see, many people never upload their own certs and if they did, it might have been many years ago. Those old SHA1 certs are frowned upon by modern browsers and Java.
Open the CSR file, copy the content and submit it to a PKI you have or a free one on line like at getacert.com. Just fill out some random info in the request and you’ll get a SHA256 cert for download immediately that “valid” a couple of months. Enough for testing or getting out of a pickle. Your own corporate CA will do better for long term needs.
On top of that you’ll need to reset the DRAC card and give it a few minutes.
Reconnect to the DRAC and after that, without failure, we could connect to the on all R710 servers where before we kept getting the dreaded “Connection Failed” error otherwise.
That’s it! Good luck.
