iDRAC7 Express Remote Access with the Dedicated Nic, Not Possible

With the series of iDRAC7 (Dell remote access cards), the card + nic is built into the motherboard of PowerEdge generation 12 systems.  Instead of having different cards, they have multiple license options, the basic being the iDRAC Express license, with the ‘top’ tier being the Enterprise license.  The Express does NOT allow you to use the iDRAC dedicated nic for remote access:

"NIC Selection: Dedicated: A required license is missing or expired."

You have to use/”share” a motherboard LAN nic (LOM its called) for remote access.  This isn't terrible, but it can cause issues if you plan to team nics, or you may have your nics already allocated out and don't want to share iDRAC traffic with your normal traffic for performance or security reasons.  The Enterprise license allows you to use the iDRAC dedicated port.  Just like iDRAC6, Enterprise also allows access to the virtual terminal/screen, that reason alone may be worth the cost of Enterprise.  To get a 30 day trial of iDRAC7 Enterprise visit this page at the Dell website.
Source:

• [PDF] http://en.community.dell.com/cfs-file/__key/communityserver-components-postattachments/00-20-06-78-92/iDRAC7_5F00_Licensing_5F00_White_5F00_Paper_5F00_incl_5F00_ValueLine.pdf

Mounting a 2.5" SDD in a 3.5" caddy tray for hot-swap servers

When it comes to installing servers there is only one thing I care about: air from the cold aisle flowing over the disks, into the CPU heat sinks and memory, out the back of the server and into the hot aisle.  The standard 3.5" to 2.5" desktop hard drive adapter is not going to work because the SATA port on the disk is not lined up with the backplane. I was disappointed with the quality of converter brackets I found when shopping around.  What I found was expensive, plastic, lacked screws, and blocked air from coming into the server chassis.  So I improvised.  Here is a caddy for a Dell PowerEdge 2950 and a Samsung 840 Pro 256GB:

 Tape, underused tool in IT:

Duct tape also works.

I was happy with the firmness of the tape and the SATA ports line up with the backplane beautifully:

I did a tray pull and insert about a dozen times with no issues.  It has been like this in production for a couple months now.  With the lack of adapter maximum air flow is achieved.  Totally non-conformist, but sometimes IT is like that.