Use Hardware Profiles to develop and perfect models of properly-configured servers used in your IT environment; for example, application servers, database servers, active directory, DNS servers, enterprise security, and so forth. You can define required hardware settings, storage settings, and firmware versions needed to assemble needed servers.

With a "Dell Reference server," the Dell Management plug-in virtual appliance can extract the settings and build a hardware profile. Once you clone the settings, you can optionally customize the settings to fit your requirements.

A Hardware Profile contains:

• Boot Order - boot device sequence, harddrive sequence
• BIOS Settings - memory. processor, SATA, integrated devices, serial communications. embedded server management, power management, system security, and miscellaneous settings
• iDRAC Settings - network, user list, and user configuration (IPMI/iDRAC privileges)
• RAID Configuration - select controller (physical disks, global hotspares, virtual disks), select specific virtual disk (RAID level, size, protocol, media format, physical disks, dedicated hotspares)
• Firmware Baseline - repository and bundle

Prerequisite: You must enable the BIOS settings:

• Collect System Inventory On Restart (CSIOR), when you copy the settings from a clone reference server. Be sure to reboot the server prior to creating the hardware profile. See Enable the reference server CSIOR setting procedure.
• BIOS Processor - Processor Virtualization Technology setting.

• Manage Hardware Profiles
• Create New Hardware Profiles
• Deployment Templates

View or download Dell virtualization documentation at: http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/eslvmwre/
View or download Dell hardware documentation for PowerEdge™ Servers