Dell iDRAC MCP

A Model Context Protocol server for the Dell iDRAC 8, the out-of-band management controller in 13th-generation PowerEdge servers (T430, T630, R430, R530, R630, R730, R730xd, ...). It lets an AI assistant answer questions about your server's hardware and health, and, if you allow it, power it on, restart it or change BIOS settings.

It talks directly to the iDRAC's Redfish API over your local network. There is no cloud service, no Dell account and no agent on the server. It works even when the operating system is down or the server is off.

Ships as a one-click .mcpb extension for Claude Desktop, and runs as a plain Node.js server for any other MCP client.

This is an independent community project. It is not affiliated with or endorsed by Dell Technologies.

What you can ask

Is my server healthy? Anything I should worry about? How warm is it inside, and how fast are the fans spinning? How much power is the server drawing right now, and what was the peak? Are any of my disks predicted to fail? What RAID level is the data volume? What happened on the server last night? Show me the event log. Which firmware versions are installed, and is the iDRAC firmware current? Is virtualization enabled in the BIOS? Shut the server down cleanly and tell me when it's off. (needs operator mode) Boot from the network once and restart. (needs operator mode) Turn on the identify LED so I can find the machine. (needs operator mode)

Related MCP server: Redfish MCP Server

Highlights

• Health at a glance: one call checks CPUs, memory, fans, temperatures, power supplies, voltages, RAID controllers, disks and volumes, and reports only what needs attention, together with recent warnings from the event log.

• Full inventory: processors, DIMMs, disks with predicted failure and SSD wear, virtual disks, network ports, iDRAC network settings and services, and firmware versions of every component.

• Logs and jobs: the System Event Log and the Lifecycle Controller log, newest first, filterable by severity or text, and the iDRAC job queue.

• Settings: BIOS attributes with their allowed values and help text, boot mode and boot order, virtual media, and a full Server Configuration Profile export.

• Safe by default: three permission modes that mirror the iDRAC roles. Read-only is the default; tools you have not enabled are never even listed.

• Kind to the iDRAC: one Redfish session per run (no login entry in the Lifecycle log for every request), logout on exit, limited concurrency for the slow iDRAC 8, and no retry loop on a wrong password, so you cannot lock yourself out.

• Built on real hardware: developed and tested against a PowerEdge T430 running the final iDRAC 8 firmware, including its Redfish quirks (the one $expand syntax it accepts, log service ids that differ from their URIs, ports that are listed but missing).

• Escape hatch: idrac_get reads any Redfish resource; idrac_raw_request (admin) sends anything.

Requirements

• A Dell PowerEdge server with iDRAC 8, firmware 2.40 or newer. 2.70 or newer is recommended; 2.86.86.86 is the final iDRAC 8 release.

• The iDRAC must be reachable over HTTPS (port 443) from the computer running the MCP client.

• Redfish enabled on the iDRAC. It is on by default (iDRAC Settings → Services → Redfish).

• Any iDRAC license works (Basic, Express or Enterprise). Virtual media requires Enterprise.

• Node.js 20 or newer, only for the npx or source install. The .mcpb extension uses the runtime built into Claude Desktop.

Install

Option A — Claude Desktop extension (.mcpb)

1. Download dell-idrac-mcp-<version>.mcpb from the latest release.

2. Double-click the file, or open Claude Desktop → Settings → Extensions and drag it in.

3. Fill in the iDRAC address, user name and password, and choose whether to allow actions or configuration changes.

4. Start a new chat and ask "Is my server healthy?"

Everything is bundled into one file, so no separate Node.js installation is needed.

The npx examples below use the npm package. Until it is published to npm you can point npx straight at the repository instead: npx -y github:mbgroen/dell-idrac-mcp.

Option B — Claude Code

claude mcp add dell-idrac --scope user \
  --env IDRAC_HOST=192.168.0.80 \
  --env IDRAC_USERNAME=claude \
  --env IDRAC_PASSWORD='your-password' \
  -- npx -y @mbgroen/dell-idrac-mcp

Option C — any other MCP client

Add this to the client's MCP server configuration (Cursor, VS Code, Windsurf, Zed, custom hosts):

{
  "mcpServers": {
    "dell-idrac": {
      "command": "npx",
      "args": ["-y", "@mbgroen/dell-idrac-mcp"],
      "env": {
        "IDRAC_HOST": "192.168.0.80",
        "IDRAC_USERNAME": "claude",
        "IDRAC_PASSWORD": "your-password",
        "IDRAC_PERMISSION_MODE": "read-only"
      }
    }
  }
}

Option D — from source

git clone https://github.com/mbgroen/dell-idrac-mcp.git
cd dell-idrac-mcp
npm install            # also compiles TypeScript
cp .env.example .env   # fill in host, user and password
npm run test:live      # optional: read-only check against your iDRAC
node dist/index.js     # speaks MCP over stdio

Create a dedicated iDRAC user

You can use root, but a dedicated account limits what the assistant can do even if this server's own checks were bypassed, and it makes the assistant's activity easy to recognise in the Lifecycle log.

1. Open the iDRAC web interface and go to iDRAC Settings → User Authentication → Local Users.

2. Click a free user ID and choose Configure User.

3. Enter a user name (for example claude) and a strong password, and enable the user.

4. Under iDRAC User Privileges, pick the role that matches the permission mode you plan to use:

IPMI and serial-over-LAN privileges are not used and can stay at No Access. The iDRAC enforces its own privileges as well: if a tool fails with HTTP 403, the account lacks a privilege for that operation.

Permission modes

The server only lists the tools its mode allows, and checks the mode again on every call.

Start with read-only. A power action affects everything that runs on the server: the assistant is instructed to confirm before turning it off or restarting it, and Claude Desktop asks for your approval before each tool call unless you turn that off.

Tools

Read-only

Operator

Admin

Configuration reference

All settings are environment variables. The .mcpb extension sets them from its settings panel.

Security notes

• The server connects only to the iDRAC you configure. Nothing is sent anywhere else.

• In Claude Desktop the password is stored by the app in your operating system's secure storage and passed to the server at start-up. The server never includes it in tool output or logs.

• The iDRAC's self-signed certificate is accepted by default; this exception applies only to this server's own connection to the iDRAC. Install a trusted certificate and enable Verify TLS certificate to remove it.

• A rejected login is not retried for 60 seconds, so a wrong password cannot trigger the iDRAC's IP blocking.

• iDRAC 8 no longer receives security updates. Keep it on a management network or VLAN that is not reachable from the internet.

• An assistant acts on what it reads. Log messages and asset tags come from the server itself; keep operator and admin modes off unless you need them.

See SECURITY.md for how to report a vulnerability.

Troubleshooting

Development

npm install
npm run build          # compile TypeScript to dist/
npm run typecheck
npm test               # smoke test + end-to-end test against a mock iDRAC 8
npm run test:live      # read-only test against the iDRAC in .env
npm run inspect        # open the MCP Inspector
npm run bundle         # build dell-idrac-mcp-<version>.mcpb

The mock iDRAC (scripts/mock-idrac.mjs) imitates an iDRAC 8 (firmware 2.86) on a PowerEdge T430: session login, $expand, paged logs with both orderings, actions, PATCH, an SCP export job, and the quirks of the real firmware. Run it on its own with node scripts/mock-idrac.mjs and point IDRAC_HOST at http://127.0.0.1:8443 (user root, password calvin) to try changes without touching real hardware.

Project layout:

src/
  index.ts              MCP server: tool registration, permission checks, shutdown
  config.ts             environment variables and permission modes
  redfish/client.ts     HTTP client: sessions, TLS, concurrency, paging, errors
  redfish/resources.ts  resource discovery and output shaping
  tools/                tool definitions, grouped by area
scripts/                build, tests, mock iDRAC
manifest.json           Claude Desktop extension manifest (tool list synced on build)

Releasing

Versions follow semantic versioning: major for breaking changes, minor for new features, patch for fixes.

1. Bump version in package.json and add a section to CHANGELOG.md.

2. Run npm run bundle; it syncs the version and tool list into manifest.json.

3. Commit, then tag and push: git tag -a v1.1.0 -m "v1.1.0" && git push --follow-tags.

The release workflow runs the tests, builds the .mcpb and an npm tarball, and attaches both with checksums to the GitHub release. It also publishes to npm when an NPM_TOKEN secret is configured.

Compatibility

Reports from other models and firmware versions are welcome. Please open an issue with the output of idrac_status.

License

MIT © mbgroen

Dell, PowerEdge and iDRAC are trademarks of Dell Inc. or its subsidiaries.