4

Is there a minimal installation I can do to make RAID information on a PowerEdge server available in SNMP so I can monitor it with Nagios?

I have found command line utilities I could use check_by_ssh with, but I believe I would need to setuid/sudo them which sounds too risky to me. I am open to other ideas as well.

Kyle Brandt
  • 83,619
  • 74
  • 305
  • 448

2 Answers2

3

Yes. It depends on your PERC controller, however. Here are my notes but it may not match your version. Dell tends to switch brands frequently and between versions in the same generation.

  • PERC 5: MegaCli
    • MegaCli-1.01.39-0.i386.rpm
  • PERC 4/Di PERC 3/QC PERC 3/DC PERC 3DCL PERC2/DC PERC2/SC: Dellmgr
    • perc-cerc-apps-6.03-A06.tar.gz/Dellmgr-5.31-0.i386.rpm
  • PERC 3/Di PERC 3/Si PERC2/Si PERC 2: afaapps
    • afaapps-2.7-2.i386.rpm for some 2650. Probably want to try 4.1 first.
    • afaapps-4.1-0.i386.rpm for 2850 and most 2650.

With Nagios, because of the version differences, it gets trickier to maintain. There's a wrapper for the afasnmp app. Here's some links...

With an older 2650 I was able to use afasnmp. Unfortunately, I will not be able to give you a definitive recommendation for all chipsets.

Edit

Hm, I get really frustrated with Dell sometimes and their tendency to default to Windows approaches on UNIX. Don't get me started on the MD3000.

It sounds like if you run MegaCLI from command line, it produces the status as desired. I hack out scripts in Nagios all the time. I'll tie a script on the source server, often a simple shell script, it will be exec in SNMP. On the Nagios server, I'll use a PERL script to pull the mib and produce the results in a fashion that Nagios can use. Would this work for you now?

Warner
  • 23,756
  • 2
  • 59
  • 69
  • Thanks as always Warner, I will look into that. These are mostly poweredge 2950s, forget the particullar perc, 6i maybe. After I extracted the tar file for openmanage and found it was a tarbomb I wasn't too excited about it. I have also seen it suck up a lot of memory in the past. – Kyle Brandt May 13 '10 at 13:47
  • No problem! Check out the update. I had a meeting, had to cut my earlier response short. I'm also looking for my notes on the Nagios setup. – Warner May 13 '10 at 13:56
  • /me giggles at the PERL 5 typo ... I had found the MegaCLI but that was the one that needs sudo I think. – Kyle Brandt May 13 '10 at 14:03
  • Maybe to avoid the sudo problem I will have cron run megacli to a textfile and then use nagios to check that text file. – Kyle Brandt May 13 '10 at 14:12
  • I caved and just installed OpenManage. I have tried a couple of snmp plugins for nagios. They all say Global State is Warning or Degraded, but all the specific areas seem fine. `MegaCli -LDInfo -LALL -aALL` returns `State: Optimal`. Any thoughts? Just the scripts or is there something else from MegaCLI I should look at to check the health... – Kyle Brandt May 13 '10 at 19:07
  • It is https://support.ipmonitor.com/mibs/STORAGEMANAGEMENT-MIB/item.aspx?id=globalStatus which is warning. '1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10893.1.20.2' , controller state, ' 1.3.6.1.4.1.674.10893.1.20.130.1.1.5', is degraded.. – Kyle Brandt May 13 '10 at 19:35
  • Edited with some new comments. – Warner May 13 '10 at 19:53
  • I just cracked and installed openmanage :-) – Kyle Brandt May 25 '10 at 13:12
  • Ah, sad to hear that. I'll keep you in mind as I tool around with that stuff in the future. – Warner May 25 '10 at 13:31
  • I think I could have just used a cronjob to run megacli populating a text file, and then had nagios check the text file and that would have worked fine. But I figured open manage might give me other advantages over time so I am deploying it to some of the servers which I will watch over time. If nothing goes wrong, I will deploy to the rest. – Kyle Brandt May 25 '10 at 13:36
0

I think for my PERC on the 2950 "Linux - SNMP" from http://www.lsi.com/storage_home/products_home/internal_raid/megaraid_sas/megaraid_sas_8888elp/index.html might work. I will update this when I know for sure.

Kyle Brandt
  • 83,619
  • 74
  • 305
  • 448