21. April 2024

Dell OpenManage Enterprise Darksite Plugin Implementation

By H. Cemre Günay

I recently had the challenge of retroactively implementing the PowerManager plugin in a dark site for a Dell OpenManage Enterprise Appliance. Since dark sites are not uncommon, I thought I would describe the process.

If you look under Application Settings -> Console and Plugins you should see plugin installation options for an OME appliance with internet access, in a dark site this does not happen and you only have OpenManage Enterprise and CloudIQ.

So how do we get our plugins? First, let’s look at the Update Settings. On OME appliances with Internet access, the How and Where to check for updates settings are set to Automatic and Dell.com, while in Dark Sites we need to use a network share.

The network share types are NFS, HTTPS and HTTP and the syntax should be as follows:

nfs://ip_address/Folder_Name
http://ip_address/Folder_Name
https://ip_address/Folder_Name

You can get the PowerManager plugin file from the Dell support site, here is the link: https://www.dell.com/support. After you have downloading the file (.zip format), unzip it and upload these files to your NFS share in the same hierarchy. I am using my NFS datastore on my ESX server:

After you have uploaded the files on your NFS share, you have to click on the blue circle arrow under Console and Plugins to refresh:

There you are, the PowerManager plugin is ready for installation:

Before you start the installation, please make a backup or snapshot of the Dell OpenManage Enterprise VM:

To install the PowerManager plugin, click on Install, you can also trigger the installation of multiple plugins (if available). I have summarized the self-explanatory installation steps in several screenshots: