IPMI Monitoring of Dell Server Hardware with Nagios and iDRAC.

If you are looking for a dead simple way to monitor ALL hardware on Dell servers look no further than IPMI on the iDRAC cards.

The basic steps to get Nagios polling the iDRAC card for hardware sensors:

• Boot the server with a keyboard and monitor attached.
• Enter setup by pressing F2 in the BIOS POST.
• Select the iDrac configuration.
• Configure basic networking to get the iDRAC card online.

Once the iDrac card is online, go to the web interface by entering the URL:
http://your-idrac.example.com/


Under the network settings configure the IPMI settings:

In the User Configuration create a new user with IPMI User privileges:

Nagios setup:

In this example the Nagios server is running Ubuntu server 14.04.x LTS.   I will assume Nagios core and plugins are already installed.

You can try the stock check_ipmi_sensors script, but I could not get it to work.  It always failed with the following error:

jemurray@nagios:~$ /usr/lib/nagios/plugins/check_ipmi_sensor -H 192.168.28.12 -U lom -P lom-password -L user
ipmi_ctx_open_outofband: session timeout
-> Execution of ipmimonitoring failed with return code 1.
-> ipmimonitoring was executed with the following parameters:
   /usr/sbin/ipmi-sensors -h 192.168.28.12 -u lom -p lom-password -l user --quiet-cache --sdr-cache-recreate --interpret-oem-data --output-sensor-state --ignore-not-available-sensors

When I downloaded the lastest plugin from: http://www.thomas-krenn.com/en/wiki/IPMI_Sensor_Monitoring_Plugin - everything worked just fine:

jemurray@selleck:~/check_ipmi_sensor_v3-96ed86b$ ./check_ipmi_sensor -H 192.168.28.12 -U lom -P lom-password -L user -x 55 -x 84 -x 86 -x 87
IPMI Status: OK | 'Fan1 RPM'=2400.00 'Fan2 RPM'=2400.00 'Fan3 RPM'=2280.00 'Fan4 RPM'=2280.00 'Fan5 RPM'=2160.00 'Fan6 RPM'=2160.00 'Inlet Temp'=22.00 'Exhaust Temp'=31.00 'Temp'=35.00 'Temp'=39.00 'Current 1'=0.60 'Current 2'=0.20 'Voltage 1'=208.00 'Voltage 2'=208.00 'Pwr Consumption'=112.00 

Copy the newly downloaded plugin to /usr/local/bin.


Create the following Nagios plugin command.   They key thing to note here is the _HOSTIPMI_IP macro that is defined in the command and then in the host definition:

# Example Syntax: ./check_ipmi_sensor -H 192.168.0.120 -U lom -P lom-nagios-password -L user -x 32 -x 52 -x 82
define command{
        command_name    check_ipmi_sensor
        command_line    /usr/local/bin/check_ipmi_sensor -H $_HOSTIPMI_IP$ -U $ARG1$ -P $ARG2$ -L user $ARG3$
}

Create the following Nagios host and service definitions:

define host {
    host_name                          statseeker.example.com
    alias                              statseeker.example.com
    address                            192.168.28.49
    _ipmi_ip                           192.168.28.12
    parents                            dc-eps-0.example.com
    hostgroups                         server
    notifications_enabled              1
    event_handler_enabled              1
    flap_detection_enabled             1
    failure_prediction_enabled         1
    process_perf_data                  1
    retain_status_information          1
    retain_nonstatus_information       1
    check_command                      check-host-alive
    max_check_attempts                 10
    notification_interval              0
    notification_period                24x7
    notification_options               d,u,r
    contact_groups                     systems
    icon_image                         base/linux40.png
    statusmap_image                    base/linux40.png
    icon_image_alt                     Server
}
define service {
    service_description             IPMI-statseeker.example.com
    host_name                       statseeker.example.com
    check_command                   check_ipmi_sensor!lom!my-lom-password!-x 55 -x 84 -x 86 -x 87
    notification_interval           0
    active_checks_enabled           1
    passive_checks_enabled          1
    parallelize_check               1
    obsess_over_service             1
    check_freshness                 0
    notifications_enabled           1
    event_handler_enabled           1
    flap_detection_enabled          1
    failure_prediction_enabled      1
    process_perf_data               1
    retain_status_information       1
    retain_nonstatus_information    1
    is_volatile                     0
    check_period                    24x7
    normal_check_interval           5
    retry_check_interval            1
    max_check_attempts              4
    notification_period             24x7
    notification_options            w,u,c,r
    contact_groups                  systems
}