The History:
This week I had a Dell PowerEdge R510’s iDrac completely dice on me; I attempted repairs with several utilities that Dell gives out on their site and all of them ended with failure. I thought it might have been considering I upgrade the iDrac from an old version to the latest, without components like the BIOS or NIC, that the iDrac communicates with, existence upgraded besides. Afterward upgrading everything, iDrac even so was non working, after a few days of messing with it, I found out through piecing together several sites how to force the iDrac in recovery fashion to do a TFTP repair, writing a new image to it.

The symptoms:
The system used the Windows iDrac Updater, which stated the update had competed successfully. I and then, remotely, told the system to reboot; it shut down and never came back up. When I physically went to the server, it was at the BIOS offset screen stating “Error Communicating with iDrac. Printing F1 to continue, or F2 for System Setup.” In restarting the server I found that “System Services” were disabled. Then the organization would get through normal boot sequence, but when it tried to communicate with the iDrac it would fail and so restart the server. After restarting, it would allow a full boot, but would give that aforementioned “Press F1 to keep, or F2 for System Setup” message. Thus the server would not boot without physical intervention at the machine.

This is a Dell PowerEdge R510, I attempted to upgrade the iDrac from ane.3.* to 1.6.5.

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The Fix:

We need to become to the iDrac’due south serial recovery manner, and then we can recover the system.

  1. Reboot the organisation, and subsequently the system resets itself for non being able to accomplish iDrac go into “System Setup”, the F2 key
  2. Hit down until you lot select “Serial Communication”, enter that menu
  3. Set the following settings:

    • Serial System Setup Settings
    • Series Communication : On With Console Redirection via COM2
    • Serial Port Address : Series Device 1=COM1, Serial Device2=COM2
    • External Series Connector : Serial Device 1
      • This could be Remote Access Device, but that gave me problems (I may have had a bad serial cablevision)
    • Failsafe Baud Charge per unit : 115200
      • For the 11G servers this is the default baud rate
    • Remote Concluding Type : VT100/VT220
    • Redirect Afterward Boot : Enable
  4. Then rebooted the system. I got Windows to start by manually hitting F1
  5. At this signal y’all demand to go to support.dell.com, lookup downloads for your system, and then under “Embedded Server Management” there is “iDRAC6 Monolithic Release 1.97” (or whatever version is newest)
  6. There are several versions, for my organization I got “iDRAC6_1.97_A00_FW_IMG.exe (50 MB)”
  7. After downloading, running this file volition extract “firmimg.d6” and a readme file.
    • The readme has no useful data in it, it just tells you to search for the user guide
  8. The “firmimg.d6” file needs to be placed on a TFTP server that the iDrac can hit
  9. Using Putty in Windows I connected the COM2 at 115200 Baud, this is the iDrac being redirected. Connect to your systems Com2 all the same y’all tin can
    • Notation all this is existence done on the server and nothing is washed on a other machine, I had TFTP running on this Windows system
  10. Hitting enter should show a recovery menu
    • Unfortunately I did non salve pictures of the recovery screen, some of the next menu options may non be the exact wording
  11. I had DHCP on the network my iDrac was sitting on so I hit 9 to become a IP address, this can as well be set manually
  12. Hit 7 to alter the TFTP server IP address
  13. Now hit the pick that says “Firmware Upgrade”, this will go to the TFTP server specified, download the firmware, and reinstall all pieces of the iDrac from that file. Information technology takes almost v minutes.
  14. Go on in mind you lot are in your OS, for me Windows, while the iDrac and its system upgrades and reboots
  15. After it reboots successfully the recovery console stops getting data, I was next to the server, when the iDrac reboots the fans become to full speed then at-home back down. That’s how I was able to tell information technology restarted
  16. Now yous tin use the RACADM commands if open manage/iDrac tools are installed, or reboot and you lot should see “Organisation Services” back online, then you can change the IP of the iDrac like normal
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Everything should work now and the earth is happy!

Update (September 2020):
I wanted to signal boost some of the comments below, if you have a 12th gen arrangement with a SD card slot then the following may be the best path forward. Thank you Simon!

Just want to add to this for anyone who comes across similar bug on a PowerEdge R720/R720XD – if the amber low-cal on the rear of the server is flashing then put the firmimg.d7 file on a FAT formatted SD carte du jour and put the SD menu in the slot at the back. The flashing calorie-free should plow solid and five or and so minutes later iDRAC should be back upward and running.