Getting started

By the end of this tutorial you’ll have mcidrac installed, one iDRAC in its registry, and a health report on your screen. You need a Dell PowerEdge with iDRAC9 (14G or newer) reachable on your network, its root credentials, and Python 3.11+ with uv installed. No hardware yet? Take the mockup lab tutorial instead — same experience, zero servers.

1. Install

uv tool install mcidrac

Or run it ephemerally with uvx mcidrac — both work everywhere below.

2. Register an iDRAC

Create ~/.config/mcidrac/idracs.toml:

[[idracs]]
name = "r740-lab"
host = "192.0.2.10"            # your iDRAC's IP or hostname
user = "root"
password_env = "R740_LAB_PASS" # read from this env var at startup
description = "R740 lab box, rack 2 U12"

The name is the handle every tool call uses. Passwords can be inline (password = "...") for a homelab, but the env-var form keeps them out of the file. Set the variable and verify:

export R740_LAB_PASS='your-idrac-password'
mcidrac --check

You should see a banner listing your configured iDRAC:

mcidrac v2026.8.10
  transport: http @ http://127.0.0.1:7903/mcp
  iDRACs:    1 configured -> r740-lab

A config error exits with status 2 and says exactly what’s wrong.

3. Connect it to Claude Code

claude mcp add idrac --scope user \
  --env R740_LAB_PASS="$R740_LAB_PASS" \
  -- uvx mcidrac --transport stdio

Start a new Claude session and the idrac_* tools are available. (Other MCP clients: see Register with an MCP client for the HTTP transport and generic setup.)

4. First commands

Ask Claude things like:

“List my iDRACs and ping them all.”

“What model is r740-lab, what’s its service tag, and is it healthy?”

“Show me the last 20 hardware events on r740-lab.”

Behind the scenes those become idrac_list + idrac_ping, idrac_info + idrac_health, and idrac_sel limit=20. Every read tool is safe to explore freely — the destructive ones (power, BIOS, SCP import) are annotated so Claude asks before acting.

5. Blink a light

The classic first write — physically identify the box:

“Blink the locator LED on r740-lab.”

Walk to the rack, find the blue blinking light, and tell Claude to turn it off. You’ve just done your first full round trip.

Where next

• Boot a server from an ISO — the flagship workflow
• Back up your configuration — do this before anything risky
• Tools reference — all 27 tools with full guidance