vSphere Hypervisor - Disk SMART & System Temperature Monitoring

[CraigWatson]

Hi,

I currently have a custom-built vSphere Hypervisor (ESXi) 4.1 box - Gigabyte mATX motherboard, Q9550, 4GB RAM, 2 x Intel PRO/1000 PT, 2 x 1TB Samsing Spinpoint F1 disks on an LSI 9260-4i.

I'm planning on rebuilding the server soon, and would like as much monitoring as possible (planning 4 x 1TB disks in RAID 10) - I've noticed that I don't have any SMART data available in ESXi or any temperature monitoring.

I'm assuming this is because I'm using a standard retail motherboard that isn't (fully) supported - so:

1) Are there any motherboards that are available on the retail market that ESXi does support - I'm not interested in softRAID or NICs.

2) Is there any way of adding support for SMART monitoring for hard disks through the 9260-4i controller?

Thanks,

Craig

[CraigWatson]

Any idea anyone?

[Nikhil_Patwa]

Hi,

Why dont you check VMware's hardware compatibility guide as there you will get enough information on what hardware is supported by VMware.

Nikhil

[CraigWatson]

Not what I asked - I know the motherboard & RAID card are supported, but there's no information about SMART status & temperature monitoring. The HCL does not give this information.

Is there any way at all of monitoring HDD SMART status within vSphere?

[DSTAVERT]

The monitoring is based on CIM (Common Information Model) somewhat similar to SNMP Wikipedia CIM. The CIM provider modules are either supplied as a part of the basic VMware provided install or a custom set provided by the OEM. Dell, HP, IBM, Fujitsu have customized VMware ESXi installer disks for their respective servers. Some CIM modules for disk controllers are included in the basic VMware installer. Others may be supplied by the manufacturers. Getting complete feedback from a self built host machine may be dificult as many of the CIM functions reliy on baseboard management components (IPMI) that are only available on servers.

Your disk controller may have CIM components available from the manufacturer and I would look there first. SNMP is also available with ESXi and you can try that although you would need an SNMP applcation to monitor the host and it may not supply the information you need but worth a try. You can also consult the HCL for guidance with choosing a complete system. http://vmware.com/go/hcl