If the system was originally sold with a valid license and one can successfully get the ownership transferred with Dell - you could effectively pull a copy of the license from the vault. SIDE note: if hardware was swapped out/replaced such as the motherboard and the license was not properly imported afterwards again this can occur. An its not worth the hassle of driving over a hour away to demand money back - considering I've got replacement/upgrade cpu's E5-2697 V2 and additional memory ordered and on the way. The issue at hand with this Dell R720 is the Enterprise iDRAC 7 license shows expired and down graded to Express sometime the prior year - something the person i purchased it from yesterday failed to mention sadly. I've always purchased servers with a variant of it - SuperMicro has IPMI, HP has iLO, and Dell iDrac.
PiKVM (Ver 3.3) is completely out of stock at - unless you want the older version (Ver 3.2) that has HDMI back-powering problems) Issue with both projects is TinyPilot is about 400 and provides a yearly subscription. An most recently the raspberry Pi project Tinypilot or PiKVM. This can also be accomplished with IP managed KVM's that are quite expensive in the range of $500 plus.
BUY DELL IDRAC ENTERPRISE LICENSE SOFTWARE
Or if you have a bunch of servers in a rack with a KVM switch one can flip over and check the server status/screen during hardware initialization - before any remote monitoring/management software loads up - such as Solarwinds, Kaseya, Atera, Pulseware, etc.
Granted if you're in the same building or a home lab this isn't necessarily needed - just hookup a monitor. As some of the other user replies from u/kevinds and u/TehWhale have mentioned. Please remember it can take some time for your bank or credit card company to process and post the refund too.With the iDRAC 7 Enterprise license you have the ability to manage and monitor the system from start to finish without the need for a monitor directly hooked up the system - allowing to see if any memory initialization errors or hardware problem occur during boot up and allowing BIOS level changes. If approved, you’ll be automatically refunded on your original payment method. We will notify you once we’ve received and inspected your return, and let you know if the refund was approved or not. The fastest way to ensure you get what you want is to return the item you have, and once the return is accepted, make a separate purchase for the new item. Unfortunately, we cannot accept returns on sale items or gift cards. Please inspect your order upon reception and contact us immediately if the item is defective, damaged or if you receive the wrong item, so that we can evaluate the issue and make it right. You can always contact us for any return question at and issues Items sent back to us without first requesting a return will not be accepted. To start a return, you can contact us at If your return is accepted, we’ll send you a return shipping label, as well as instructions on how and where to send your package. You’ll also need the receipt or proof of purchase. To be eligible for a return, your item must be in the same condition that you received it, unopened or unused, with tags, and in its original packaging. We have a 14-day return policy, which means you have 14 days after receiving your item to request a return.