Like so many others, I’m managing fewer and fewer physical Windows boxes these days. On these physical machines, remote console access via iDracs or iLOs can be super handy.
I recently had a situation on a Dell server where the iDrac password on file wasn’t working. It would be pretty inconvenient to travel to the site to reconfigure the iDrac. Fortunately, Dell’s OpenManage Server Administrator had been installed.
Racadm is a utility installed with OpenManage. When ran locally on a physical server, it is possible to reset the root password without authenticating to the iDrac.
I was able to use racadm to reset the root password with the following command:
racadm config -g cfgUserAdmin -i 2 -o cfgUserAdminPassword <New Password>
After the command completed, I was able to login to the iDrac with my new password.
There’s one more command, I’d like to mention- If by chance you’re unable to access your iDrac, running the following will let you know if your networking configuration might be wrong:
racadm getsysinfo
You can find a full list of racadm commands for iDrac 8 here.