CloudIQ, which began life in 2016 as a SaaS (software as a service) platform to proactively manage and monitor Dell's enterprise storage arrays in the cloud, now encompasses virtually every infrastructure product on its books. Dell's PowerEdge server portfolio joined CloudIQ in 2022 and this year includes a host of new features including PowerFlex group details, improvements to cybersecurity services, the addition of alerts for urgent and recommended PowerEdge updates in the home page and functions to program them. at convenient times.
Our test lab uses many PowerEdge systems and in this review, we focus primarily on the CloudIQ services available for server management. One feature that will definitely appeal is that CloudIQ is free and the only major requirement is that each device must have a valid Dell ProSupport service contract or higher.
There is another requirement that differentiates CloudIQ from HPE's Compute Ops Management (COM). The latter's ProLiant Gen10 and 11 servers can communicate directly with the COM portal account, while CloudIQ requires each site to have a local instance of its virtualized OpenManage Enterprise (OME) application that functions as a telemetry collector.
An advantage of Dell's approach is that CloudIQ can manage all PowerEdge servers from Gen13 with iDRAC8: COM requires HPE's on-premises OneView application to access ProLiant Gen9 and lower models with iLO4 controllers. CloudIQ is also capable of collecting a lot of valuable information about the health, system performance, and security situation of Dell servers.
Dell CloudIQ Review: Cloud Deployment
Your first job is to install local OME instances and upgrade them to version 3.10 to support cybersecurity operations plus server maintenance and CloudIQ firmware upgrade. We ran OME v3.10 in the lab on a Windows Server 2022 Hyper-V host and Dell also offers a VMware download.
Another advantage is that you only need the free base version of OME for CloudIQ integration. This provides many useful features including server discovery and inventory, firmware updates and reference management, driver compliance, monitoring and alerting.
It only takes a few minutes to create a secure CloudIQ account and then add the plugin from the OME web console and register it using your Site ID and the generated passkey and PIN. The last job is to access the plugin from the OME console, give it a friendly name, and enable cybersecurity data collection and remote management. Access controls are strict, as you can decide precisely which OME systems and groups CloudIQ users can initiate remote administration jobs for.
Dell CloudIQ Review: PowerEdge Management Features
The OME plugin sends encrypted telemetry data across all managed systems every 15 minutes and can also run manual syncs from OME. The CloudIQ portal opens with a widget-based dashboard that provides an overview of connected systems and OME collectors, system status, status of urgent and recommended updates, detected cybersecurity risks, alerts, and open service requests.
The Monitor page showed all of our PowerEdge systems and selecting one from the list gave us a lot of information about it. Health monitoring can be configured to show the server's health over custom periods going back years, while the Inventory tab reveals all hardware details, including device cards, CPU, memory, network adapters, and drivers. storage.
CloudIQ applies compliance reports to all or selected systems to determine which BIOS, firmware and driver versions are required, and you can see those currently installed for each component and whether there are critical and recommended updates. Click the system updates link and you can browse the updates available for each managed server, make your selections, and run an immediate update or schedule them to run when needed.
The progress of the update can be monitored from the Portal's Jobs page, although the default estimated runtime of 5.5 hours can be ignored, as we found that all of our jobs took 10 minutes at most. Server power can be controlled remotely directly from the portal which also provides links to the OME and iDRAC web consoles, but Dell has not updated its CloudIQ mobile apps which do not currently support PowerEdge servers.
CloudIQ's Server Performance Viewer is a winner as it features graphs of CPU, memory and system utilization for the last 24 hours along with more information on CPU and system inlet temperatures, airflow in feet cubic per minute and overall energy consumption. Introduced late last year, CloudIQ now uses predictive analytics on historical PowerEdge server performance trends to help enterprises plan server upgrades and workload migrations.
Carbon footprints are calculated for each managed server and the portal displays total carbon emissions in CO2e (kg) and energy usage in kWh for the current year along with energy trends. A graph shows carbon emissions by month, and selecting a server from the list below allows you to drill down, see its energy consumption and carbon emissions over the last seven days, and see a forecast.
The cybersecurity function applies assessment plans and templates to servers that check for a wide range of potential risks. All of our servers received multiple cybersecurity alerts because, among many other things, we did not have secure boot enabled, our iDRAC administrator passwords were not strong enough, SSH access was available, all of their USB ports were enabled, SNMPv3 was not enabled. It was set up – you get the idea.
Dell CloudIQ Review: Is it worth it?
Of course it is, it's free. CloudIQ is ideal for Dell-centric environments, providing a single cloud portal to proactively monitor and analyze your entire infrastructure, including network devices, storage arrays, data protection systems, and of course, PowerEdge servers. .
Deployment is undemanding and the highly informative portal is sure to improve productivity and help troubleshoot complex issues, such as the potential impact of server and storage array performance on VMware workloads. The cybersecurity service will keep systems protected from intrusions, and as heavy users of PowerEdge, we were impressed with the server performance monitoring services, automated update tools, predictive analytics, and forecasting features.
Dell CloudIQ Requirements
| Supported servers | Dell PowerEdge Gen13 and above |
| iDRAC | iDRAC8 up |
| Previous requirements | Valid ProSupport contract and above |
| Storage systems | PowerStore, PowerMax, PowerScale, PowerVault, Unity XT, XtremIO, SC Series |
| Data Protection | PowerProtect DD, PowerProtect Data Manager |
| Hyperconverged | VxBlock, VxRail, PowerFlex |
| Networks | PowerSwitch for Ethernet, Connectrix for SAN |
| Cloud | Dell APEX |
