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For one of our machines we lost our root password for the iDrac7 Enterprise interface. The machine is running many virtual machines and turning them off would be a huge task.

So, my question is: Is there a way to reset the iDrac Password without rebooting the machine? It's running VMware ESXi 5.5 and I can connect to it via vSphere client as well as SSH.

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  • Is this host a member of a vSphere HA cluster?
    – joeqwerty
    Jul 15, 2014 at 18:00
  • No. It's just a single ESXi Essential installation.
    – Ethan Leroy
    Jul 17, 2014 at 21:08

4 Answers 4

Reset to default
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Try this from the command line: racadm racresetcfg

If you have the DRAC tools installed, it'll reset your DRAC to factory defaults. If it fails, you're stuck rebooting the server.

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  • No. racadm is not installed. Any other idea? (I stopped reading at "If it fails" ;-)
    – Ethan Leroy
    Jul 15, 2014 at 13:41
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    @EthanLeroy Um... install it?
    – HopelessN00b
    Jul 15, 2014 at 16:59
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    It's been a long time since my last comment, but the problem is still there. @HopelessN00b Thanks for the link, but I also have a problem with this: My operating system is ESXi 5.5 and the download list does not contain the mentioned Linux Remote Access Utilities. So, where can I download the those DRAC Tools for Unix-Systems/ESXi 5.5?
    – Ethan Leroy
    Mar 24, 2015 at 12:24
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    Ethan - for heaven's sake, read the whole article. "The Dell Remote Access Controller (DRAC) console is management station software designed to provide remote management capabilities for the Dell systems. " That means you install it on a management station, not the server.
    – mfinni
    Mar 24, 2015 at 13:50
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    Again: My machine runs ESXi 4 and not Windows. So, I can take another computer, install it there, but it would be a big security hole if I could then reset my iDRAC password from that machine, because that would mean that anyone could reset it. Reboot: For resetting the password during reboot, I need access to the iDRAC interface. So, a reboot won't help me much, as long as I am not on site. Additionally the server hosts dozens of virtual machines so I really like to avoid a reboot.
    – Ethan Leroy
    Mar 24, 2015 at 20:54
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I know I'm resurrecting the dead here, but here is an "half-answer" for anyone who stumbles across this question. (I know you've already sorted your issue, and no one wants to reboot their servers if they can help it!)

You can do this from OpenManage for ESX, but...

...as it does require a reboot of ESX after install, at least if you pre-install it, and if you have some unexpected downtime, when the server comes back up you can have all the access you want, as well as change the iDrac username/password.

Here are instructions from Dell, and supports ESX 5.5 to 6.5 - steps 1-6 tell you all you need to know to install OpenManage on ESX, just ignore the last step.

I make it a habit now to install OpenManage on all servers immediately after installing ESX as well as setting up the iDrac, just in case!

(I'm not going to re-post the entire page contents - suffice to say if anyone comments on this that the link is broken, I'll update the link)

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Solution: push and hold down the glowing blue button labelled "i" on the back of the server for 15 seconds... that will reboot the iDrac.

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  • The OP asked for a solution which did not involve rebooting the machine, just resetting the password...
    – Castaglia
    Mar 9, 2016 at 22:25
  • This just restarts the DRAC, not the whole server, so this is also a good hint, but well, not answers the question. I wanted to reset the iDrac password without rebooting. For example, just from Linux. I said, it's a good hint, because after trying to log in some hundred times, the DRAC got unresponsive, so we had to reset i this way. But yeah, for resetting the password we had to restart the whole server.
    – Ethan Leroy
    Mar 10, 2016 at 13:26
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For anyone who would be searching for solution. The tool you want to install on esx is called "Dell EMC iDRAC Tools for VMware" available as vib from here it will e.g. show your drac IP, systemtag, add new drac admin all from esxcli

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  • This supports 6.5 and 6.7. Not 5.5-6.0. OP is running 5.5.
    – Dacid Salin
    Nov 29, 2022 at 21:32

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