Symptoms

Both integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) Service Module (iSM) 3.5 and OpenManage Integration for Windows Admin Center (OMIWAC) use OS BMC pass-through (USB NIC) for communication between the host OS and iDRAC. These management choices cannot function as expected when the USB NIC is disabled. By default, for this point-to-point connection between the iDRAC and the host OS, iDRAC has an IPv4 address set to 169.254.0.1 and the host end of the connection gets an IPv4 address incremented by 1 (169.254.0.2). The presence of USB NIC surfaces a few errors in cluster validation and failover cluster manager. Test-Cluster fails with duplicate IP address errors With USB NIC is enabled in iDRAC, if you run Test-Cluster command to verify the cluster creation readiness or cluster health, you will see an error in the validation report that the nodes in the cluster have duplicate IP addresses. This error can be safely ignored. This error surfaces as the OS BMC pass-through, in it's default configuration, gets the same IP address (169.254.0.2) on all nodes participating in the cluster. Resolution 1: You can temporarily disable the USB NIC (labeled as Ethernet, by default) before running the Test-Cluster command. Resolution 2: You can statically change the IPv4 address assigned to the USB NIC in the host OS so that all nodes have a different IPv4 address. Resolution 3: iDRAC web console can be used to alter the IPv4 address assigned to iDRAC end of the USB NIC therefore indirectly changing the IPv4 address assigned in the host OS for the USB NIC. By changing the IPv4 address of the iDRAC USB NIC end to alternate addresses will assign different IPv4 addresses to the host OS USB NIC endpoints. For example, if there are four nodes in a cluster, changing the iDRAC IP USB NIC addresses to 169.254.0.1, 169.254.0.3, 169.254.0.5, and 169.254.0.7, the host OS USB NIC gets IPv4 addresses, 169.254.0.2, 169.254.0.4, 169.254.0.6, and 169.254.0.8 respectively. Test-Cluster fails with network communication errors With USB NIC is enabled in iDRAC, if you run Test-Cluster command to verify the cluster creation readiness or cluster health, you will see an error in the validation report that the IPv4 addresses assigned to the host OS USB NIC cannot be used to communicate with the other cluster networks. This error can be safely ignored. Resolution: You can temporarily disable the USB NIC (labeled as Ethernet, by default) before running the Test-Cluster command. USB NIC network shows as partitioned cluster network When the USB NIC is enabled in iDRAC, cluster networks in the failover cluster manager show the networks associated with the USB NIC as partitioned. This issue surfaces since the cluster communication is enabled by default on all network adapters and USB NIC IPv4 addresses cannot be used to communicate externally therefore breaking cluster communication on those NICs. This error can be safely ignored. Resolution: You can disable cluster communication the networks associated with the USB NICs.

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