OT: Dell OpenManage (Server Administration)

My main server is a Dell Power Edge PE2900III, CentOS5.5 64-bit based.
A couple of months ago, I installed OpenManage 6.2, a suite of  utilities including Dell Update Package and Server Administration, it was not that a straightforward installation, but using the workaround as suggested here, use “Tikanga” line instead of the standard one coming in /etc/redhat-release file, and it goes smoothly.
The OMSA (for OpenManage Server Administration) is pretty useful to manage the all hardware of the server.

1) My PERC 6i/Integrated firmware has been marked as obsolete (firmware v6.0.2) for a while now, I then decided to install the latest one (firmware v6.3.0 from Dec-2010).
And here start all the pain.
The binary installation of the firmware just failed without more explanations (fortunately enough, it did not installed at all), until I discovered that it requires the latest version of OpenManage to get installed (mine is 6.2, the latest one being 6.4).
Then, why not, let’s go for an OpenManage upgrade.

2) And here a new pain.
The upgrade of OpenManage was not straightforward at all, somehow, the version I got installed was version 6.2 *32*-bit whereas the latest version 6.4 is *64*-bit.
I tried to follow the nice instructions given by Dell for Linux OS, but when doing so, many errors as below are reported :
…
file /usr/share/locale/en/LC_MESSAGES/libsmbios-2.2-x86_64.mo from install of libsmbios-2.2.26-6.2.el5.i386 conflicts with file from package libsmbios-2.2.19-10.1.el5.x86_64
…
Well, I was rather speechless, but one way to go, deinstall everything from the already installed OpenManage. I should be very thankful to Trevor who gave the all proper steps.
I’ve finally get OpenManage upgraded to 6.4, then following the Dell Update Package documentation, can run the upgrade of the PERC 6i firmware as I expected in point 1.

3) At that point, I re-installed OM, but do not have OMSA working anymore (in previous point 2, I have had to de-install everything !), I have had to re-install OMSA as well, downloaded from the Dell download center. And here again, a couple of errors were coming out, complaining about conflict between 64 and 32-bit RPMs. I firstly have to deinstall them using “rpm –e”, and re-install them from the given downloaded installation package (we can find them under linux/REHL/script/RPMS). And finally, get the OMSA 6.4 login page ! Few changes, not sure how far are the changes, but looks nice (find out more in the Dell documentation). And the PERC 6i firmware is up-to-date.

One more proof, if it was needed, upgrade firmware is never, ever a walkover.