Creating a bootable USB device with Rufus for updating Dell PowerEdge servers

This article provides information about making an USB device bootable and integrating an update-image (ISO-file). For servers without an optical drive (DVD) or a configured integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) this is an alternative way of updating all server firmwares in one single step.

To create a bootable USB device, you can use the freeware tool Rufus (Figure 1).

Note: Rufus is not a Dell certified software. Installation and use on own risk. We share our best practices with Rufus but do not support issues regarding this program.

1. Download the tool to a Windows system
2. Download the matching ISO image for the server you want to update from this list of repositories
3. Start the tool
4. Choose the USB device
5. Select FAT32
6. Choose the downloaded ISO-file
7. Click on Start to create the media
8. Restart the server and boot from the created device
    

Figure 1 – Creating a bootable media via Rufus