Questions about monitoring Dell servers

[Jason Lixfeld]

I've got a couple of Dell PowerEdge 1850s, one of which has FreeBSD  
6.1-RELEASE on it.

I'm trying to figure out the best way to monitor these boxes.  I'm  
interested in RAID status more than anything else, but I'd like to  
get as many of the sensors working as possible.

What I'm confused about is the difference between IPMI, Open Manage  
and DRAC.  I don't quite understand what does what, and how FreeBSD  
support is for either of these options.  I tried and failed to get  
IMPI working, I tried to setup linux compatibility to get Open Manage  
working (which I assume is the osabmcutil RPM) but I couldn't.  And  
I'm not sure if any of these is dependent on the DRAC card or if the  
DRAC card and these options are mutually exclusive and the DRAC card  
just does "some other cool stuff"(tm).

Can anyone share their experiences?