I’m not tech illiterate, but it’s also not my job or anything. That said I managed to figure out how to get a synology up and running and it hosts my Jellyfin and *arrs. Nothing too exciting. I also have a couple of vps’s that I use for nextcloud, a recipe server, all in docker containers. Not nothing but also, not the hardest thing to accomplish.
Well, my manager gifted me an old Dell PowerEdge R720 and 4 hard drives. Yeah, this is way more than I know what to do with, or even where to start. Do I need to plug both power cables in? I still need to figure out how to get a monitor hooked up to it with what looks to be a VGA cable. And even then this thing is a behemoth and what do I even do with it?? My manager was so excited to talk to me about it and I’m all 😵💫
Where do I start?
Honestly glad to help. We all start somewhere.
You should be able to access idrac, if it’s licensed, by pointing your browser at the ip address that its dedicated nic has. Find that address from your router or whatever else you have that is handing out dhcp. It is a management portal, yes. You can control power, fans, get info about the servers state, set up logs and monitoring, and even use its “virtual screen” to see what you would if you hooked a monitor up to the server. The above is a great way to remotely add an OS or troubleshoot a server.
Idrac will either have a default password you can google or the server will have a little plastic pull out tab with a unique password you can reset on login.
If your server doesn’t have it, as you generally have to pay a fee to have it on, it’s okay. A monitor is a good stand in for one server. Less convenient and feature packed, but that’s homelabbing sometimes.