IPMI

A small tool for interfacing with the control module on DELL servers is the “ipmitool” package.  It comes in handy when you need to do some basic detective work but do not want the baggage that comes along with the Dell OpenManage packages.

ipmitool sel list
ipmitool sel clear

You can even get fancy with tools like Nagios to monitor the hardware logs and act upon them accordingly.  If anything, it’s a quick way to clear the solid amber light on a DELL server without resorting to rebooting it.