Retrieving remote system details from a BSD server
Retrieving remote system details from a BSD server
You're looking for a quick overview of your system. The main details are CPU cores, RAM, and swap space. You can check the disk layout with fdisk or by consulting the manufacturer's specifications on their official site.
The Dell service code isn’t available on their site—it was previously handled by Kace (formerly part of Dell). When I tried to reach Dell tech support, they redirected me to Quest, who isn’t assisting. They won’t provide root access, so I can’t run lspci directly. My best choice is to use software to extract hardware details from an Ubuntu or Windows machine, either locally or remotely.
You don't have to be an admin to find those details—I can show you how. You can quickly check things like CPU model, RAM, and core count. Or simply remove the side panel and inspect the stickers and cards inside.
The system has been locked out by Quest, so I can't log in to the console to run those commands. It's a rack mount in that is a production server, so while I can do this, it's a last-ditch resort because it's a PITA to get to it.
I assumed you had regular user privileges since I thought you had standard shell access. The simplest approach would be to launch it and then test. However, appliances function this way—you're not purchasing the server, but rather acquiring a solution for a specific task, which means the internal hardware isn't critical.
I hope they took it out in the latest update. We used to have it, but now we need to virtualize it and make sure the VM specs are better than the hardware specs. This whole process is about gathering information before setting up the VM. I thought I could get the details easily...but clearly not. Time to move forward!
This seems like a support contact form. However, given that the r420 is quite outdated with 16 cores (and slower ones) and limited RAM, virtualizing should be straightforward for larger systems. In fact, removing the top layer quickly takes only minutes to tally the RAM modules and snap a photo of their labels.
Consent reached, though the setup is quite high up—15 feet off the ground. Two hours in, their reply was essentially "well, we don't know." Kace turned out to be an impressive system that no one seems to understand how to profit from, which explains why the company keeps getting sold. It started with Kace, moved to Dell, then EMC, and finally Quest—now Quest is clearly not worth much.