Dell R720 (12th Gen *20 servers)

If you buy an R720 that the iDRAC is “bricked”, either by someone trying to do an upgrade from a really old version to the latest, or just the EMMC failing on update, you might have a way to recover. You'll need to solder a header pin set on the iDRAC UART ports on the board, and go direct console via UART. From there you can either force a reset of iDRAC if you are able to, or try go into developer mode to reload the firmware via SD or TFTP. My experiences left me with the option of replacing the motherboard or trying to replace the emmc chip. There is a way to boot iDRAC from SD.

Mid-cycle, Dell switched the file structure layout for iDRAC, and combined the Lifecycle Controller and iDRAC firmwares together. If a user tried to to an update from a v1 to v2, there would tend to be issues as the emmc would be full and parts of the partition would be lost.

Specifically, if the iDRAC version is 1*, a user has to update to the latest v1 iDRAC, then update to the first 2* version, then can update as you please to the latest version to help avoid bricking the emmc.

https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/a49b4y/r720_idrac_help/ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvSDNAi39YY https://www.win-raid.com/t3828f16-Problem-Dell-R-xd-iDRAC-BIOS-Recovery-6.html#msg80465 https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/bsou3n/dell_r520_idrac_7_swc0700_and_idrac8_prompt/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/phll8h/boot_dell_r720_idrac_from_sd_card/ https://www.reddit.com/r/homelab/comments/cd5jhu/new_r620_made_me_bring_out_the_soldering_iron/