Dell Open Manage on ESX5

The information provided by Dell and VMWare is confusing and incomplete. There are many how to articles on the web but many refer to previous versions of ESX and the signal to noise ratio is low.

Target Setup
Dell T100 ESXi5 Server
Open Manage Server Assistant on remote Windows PC.

On the ESX server
1. Enable SSH shell access
1.1. Connecting with vSphere Client,
1.2. Select the host Configuration tab
1.3. Select Security Profile from the Software menu (to the left)
1.4. Click Properties, select SSH from the service list and click Options
1.5. Set SSH to Start and Stop with host and Start the service

2. Upload the ESX VIB file
2.1. Download the following file from Dell
ESXi5.1 OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-6.5.0-542907.VIB-ESX50i_A02.zip
ESXi4.1 OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-6.5.0-2247.VIB-ESX41i_A01.zip
2.2 Copy the file to the ESXi host

ESXi5.1 Use an sftp client to upload the ZIP file to the ESX server location
/var/log/vmware/

ESXi4.1 Use the data store browser to upload the ZIP file to the server
Then use SSH to copy the file to /var/log/vmware/ 

3. Use an SSH client to install the VIB file on the ESX server
3.1. Using the vSphere client shut down all guests and place the host in maintenance mode
3.2. Login to the ESX server using SSH
3.2. Run the following command

ESXi5.1
esxcli software vib install -d /var/log/vmware/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-6.5.0-542907.VIB-ESX50i_A02.zip

ESXi4.1
esxupdate --bundle /var/log/vmware/OM-SrvAdmin-Dell-Web-6.5-2247.VIB-ESX41i_A01.zip update

3.3. Successful installation returns
Installation Result
Message: The update completed successfully, but the system needs to be rebooted for the changes to be effective.
Reboot Required: true
VIBs Installed: Dell_bootbank_OpenManage_6.5-0000
VIBs Removed:
VIBs Skipped:

3.4. Reboot the ESX server

4. Install and run Open Manage Server Assistant (OMSA) on a workstation.
4.1. The OMSA component of interest is the embedded web server. It can be installed on virtual hardware or physical hardware other than Dell servers, by running the main setup application. Do not try to install using the sysmgt.msi as this may (will) neglect installation of some dependencies.
4.2. SNMP may need to be installed and configured on the workstation.
4.3. To start OMSA, open Firefox or IE on the workstation and enter https://localhost:1311 in the address bar.
4.4. Note that OMSA can also be started using it's desktop icon when Firefox or IE are set as the default browser. Chrome is problematic when used with OMSA.
4.5. Once the OMSA login prompt appears, click the Manage Remote Node link which appears below the login dialog, in small print.
4.6. Enter the ESX hostname or IP in the corresponding field and Log into OMSA using the root or equivalent account.

5. That should be it.

Notes:

1. CIMOEMProvidersEnabled
Much of the documentation online refers to setting a variable on the ESX server
UserVars.CIMOEMProvidersEnabled

The variable was deprecated in ESX5 and replaced by
UserVars.CIMoem-dell-openmanage-esxiProviderEnabled

Which is enabled by default. No action should be required.

2. VMWare SNMP
Since ESX 4.1 a native SNMP module has replaced Net-SNMP. The vmware-SNMP module can be configured using the vSphere CLI using the command.

vicfg-snmp.pl --server <esx hostname|IP address> --username <username> --password <password> -E -c <community> --port <port>

The vicfg-snmp.pl perl script updates the file
/etc/vmware/snmp.xml
On the ESX server

Further Notes:
OMSA is available for Linux but I have not tested whether it can be used to manage a remote ESX node.

The vSphere CLI may be installed on Windows or Linux and contains a number of management PERL scripts. vSphere Power CLI is a different beast altogether, being an extension of Microsoft's Powershell it can be installed on Windows but does not contain the same management scripts as vSphere CLI.