In order to physically get on to the consoles of my Servers I have a 15" 1U Rack Mounted Dell Monitor with Keyboard and Mouse, plugged into an HP IP KVM. So when I put in the Dell Open Manage Server Assistant 5.2 CD into my Dell Server you would think that it is all go from there? Well no, in fact its a case of Monitor says "no". For some reason once it has loaded the Linux Kernel and then goes into the graphical user interface the Dell Monitor displays Out Of Sync. Not very handy really. when I an on the console of one of my HP Servers and want to install it and use the smart start it seems to be quite happy and displays all the graphical user interface. So I thought I'd take the HP IP KVM out of the equation, but no it still did not want to display the graphical setup screens.
My next test was another monitor, plugged directly into the server, it worked so I thought how about if that monitor is plugged into the HP IP KVM? and.... yes it worked. So the problem boiled down to something with in the Server Assist CD and resolution settings and frequencies.
Today I downloaded the latest Version 5.3 and Dell seemed to have rectified the issue I can now stand at the console on the server and Install it, however I could just do what I did before and sit at my desk and use the HP Console Viewer software to manage the HP IP KVM.
The actual config of the server using 5.3 is still very similar to 5.2, it looks slightly different but other than that I guess the updates are in the back of the Install for things like Drivers etc....
The one thing that Dell have not yet done and what HP have been doing on their Smart Start since 7.4 I think is included an option to obtain the Windows Source Files from a network share. I found that added option with HP really useful as I could point it to our server with a folder shared out for Windows Server, rather than finding a Windows CD or having to burn another CD.