How do I get the power consumption of a Dell PowerVault on the CLI?

Question

How do I measure the power usage of a Dell PowerVault storage device from the command line of the attached server?

Answer 1

You need the Dell MD Storage Manager. You can find it by entering the service tag of your PowerVault into the Dell support website, and then download the MDSS iso image. Mount it locally and then start the installer:

mount -o loop DELL_MDSS_Consolidated_RDVD_6_2_0_2.iso /mnt
cd /mnt
./md_launcher_rhel_x86_64.bin

There may be smarter ways to install the software. ;-) If you know one, please comment!

Then:

[root@dell ~]# cd /opt/dell/mdstoragesoftware/mdstoragemanager/client
[root@dell client]# ./SMcli localhost -c "show storageArray powerInfo;"
Performing syntax check...

Syntax check complete.

Executing script...

Total power drawn: 1,738 Watts
Number of enclosures: 2
Enclosure power input details:

   ENCLOSURE ID  POWER SUPPLY SERIAL NUMBER   INPUT POWER  
   0             0                            446 Watts    
   0             1                            466 Watts    
   1             0                            440 Watts    
   1             1                            386 Watts    

Script execution complete.

SMcli completed successfully.

If it doesn't work:

Encountered "show storageArray powerInfo" at line 1, column 15.
Was expecting one of:
    "show" "storageArray" "profile" ...
    ...

The you may need to update the firmware of your PowerVault. You can use the SMclient command in the same directory to do that.

If your PowerVault is attached to another server, you might still be able to do this. You can find attached PowerVault addresses this way:

./SMcli -d