DRAC/ iLO Controllers

The Dell Remote Access Controller or DRAC is an out-of-band management platform on certain Dell servers. The platform may be provided on a separate expansion card, or integrated into the main board; when integrated, the platform is referred to as iDRAC.

It's available on most PowerEdge server models and has its own network interface for connectivity separate of that of your operating system. From the DRAC you can manage media, power, integrated system log messages, and have a remote view of the console. The DRAC is the weaker cousin of the Hewlett Packard Integrated Lights-Out (iLO) yet provides similar functionality.

Integrated Lights-Out, or iLO, is a proprietary embedded server management technology by Hewlett-Packard which provides out-of-band management facilities. The physical connection is an Ethernet port that can be found on most Proliant servers and microservers of the 300 and above series.

Figure 1: A sample representation of an Idrac modules; parts available at Tekmart Africa