Hello. Today we'll be covering virtual media for the iDRAC. This is a useful tool as it allows us
to install operating systems, present drivers or connect other files through virtual floppy.
First let's cover some topics regarding virtual media remote file share, and boot to network ISO
for virtual media. Let's note the following points. We can mount both a virtual CD and
virtual floppy simultaneously. We can mount a local file as well as from a share on the network.
As soon as you disconnect from the virtual console the media will also be disconnected,
and lastly it also can only be mounted from the GUI.
For remote file share let's cover the following points. We can only mount one thing at a time.
We can only mount from a share on the network. RFS will stay connected indefinitely until the
connection is manually removed, and lastly we can mount using the GUI,
WSMan, Redfish and RACADM. now let's cover the features of boot to network iso we can only mount
one thing at a time with the exception being if you are using scp on iDRAC9 with firmware 4.0
we can only mount from a share this will stay connected for a predetermined amount of time
the default is 18 hours and this can be mounted by using either the GUI, WSMan, Redfish or RACADM.
In this example i'll be showing you what it looks like to boot to an ISO through the virtual media.
First we need to enable it, then we will choose to map
CD/DVD. I will be using the support live image for this example.
I will tell the console to boot to the virtual CD/DVD
and then power on the system, it will take several minutes for this to boot.
Now that we are booted we can show off the virtual floppy feature. I have created a text file that we
will turn into an image. Please note that you must create a separate folder for the files
under 'virtual media'. Click on 'create image' choose the folder with the files and where to save
then click 'create image'. Now that we have our
file let's mount it through the virtual media by choosing 'map removable disk'.
As we can see from the pop-up it is automatically mounted and accessible by the operating system.
To wrap up let's take a look at the remote file share feature
from the GUI. If we click on 'virtual media' and scroll down we can see the RFS settings.
For this example I have already set up a share containing the support live image. We will also
be using the RACADM command 'remoteimage'. The c switch is for connect, the u switch is for user,
the p switch is for password, and the l switch is for the location.
After pressing enter we should see the message 'Remote image is now configured'.
If we refresh our GUI page we should be able to see the RFS settings are now filled out.
As an example let's see the error we get when trying to use virtual media now.
As you can see we must manually disconnect the RFS
session. Please be aware of this if you are trying to use virtual media and you get this error.
Now that we have disabled RFS let's try the virtual media again.
And now it connects. Thank you for viewing our iDRAC training video on virtual media.