Hey guys
Picture this: I have a Dell Poweredge C5000 chassis installed for usage for several different clients. I have C5220 servers installed in all 12 slots.
Now, I have a cable connected to the dedicated management port on the chassis, which is configured to my company network for management by ourselves. Now, I want to see if I can offer our clients to have remote access to their servers and for that the dedicated chassis connection won't do. I assume the solution is to simply connect a separate cat cable to one of the network NICs on the server and thus use both NICs on the server (with the client only using one NIC for his general network connection). I assume also that I have to set the server to use a shared-nic for the BMC Lan Port in Bios. Here are my questions.
1) Does it matter which NIC (NIC 1 or 2) I use as the management port?
2) I have little experience with using shared nics as management ports, but I've heard that using a port in that way reduces a gigabit network port to a 10/100 Mbit port. Is that correct for this server? Moreover, if I do connect the managment port to NIC2 for example, and the network to NIC1, will such reduction in speed affect the network NIC1 port?
3) Is there any reduced functionality involved in using a shared NIC remote management, over dedicated NIC? I'm mostly looking for the functionality of rebooting servers, using console redirection and redirecting local media (USB, CDrom or ISO) to do installs over the remote connection.
Take care,
Thorsteinn