Hardware monitoring - RAID - Motherboard - etc

[Jens_Madsen]

Just installed ESX 3.5 and Windows Server 2008 on a brand new dual quad core server w/ 16GB RAM

I'm very new to ESX and I don't have much Linux epxperience.

First thing I always do on a Windows server is to install my hardware monitoring tools, however not being able to see the real hardware layer these tools to monitor heat and voltage on the motherboards and disk health on the RAID controller won't work under Windows. RAID with no notification is really not redundant. Also it would be nicve to know if the sucker is overheating.

Motherboard: Intel S5000PSL

RAID: HP Smart Array E200

What does other people do to monitor the health of their hardware??

I understand that I can probably install the monitoring software or agents in the SC console, but I can't find software specifically build for the ESX 3.5

I know that the SC is build upon Linux, but which distribution do I choose when downloading software from the mfg's (i'm running 64bit memory extensions, of course - NOT Itanium)

Also what are the pitfalls of installing other software into the SC

Thanks in andvance

Jens

[vmPUNK]

what brand box?

there are manufacturer specific agents for esx that do the whole 9 yeards via snmp - i'm assuming that's what youre used to

ex. from hp http://h20000.www2.hp.com/bizsupport/TechSupport/SoftwareDescription.jsp?lang=en&cc=US&swItem=MTX-07...

you really only need to monitor esx as it has controll of all hw, you probably wont be installing any similar agents inside your vms

[Jens_Madsen]

I know the ESX has the control of the hardware, but ESX won't tell me if I blew a hard disk in an array or if my CPU or other areas of my MoBo is overheating or if a redundant power supply blew out.

THANK YOU for the link to the HP agent. I'll try to install the agent in SC and the HP Insigh Manager under Windows to poll the agent.

My box in an INTEL WHITEBOX (actually it's black) MotherBoard: Intel S5000PSL the case is an Intel SC5299DP

I read somewhere that agents and utilities build for Red Hat Enterpise Linux 3 can be installed in SC - is this the case???

Jens

[jackpal]

The service console is based on RHEL3 so you might just be able to get away with Red Hat 3 packages as long as there are not too many dependecies. We run Dell servers here and I routinely install the Dell Tools (OMSA) with no problems. They work fine.

[Texiwill]

Hello,

Some agents can be, some can not be. It depends if they require hardware access to determine the state of the machine. For example the HP agents access a specialized ASIC and the Raid controller. I run HP agents on my laptop to get some diagnostics. But once more they are special made. I would see if your hardware makes use of anything special. I.e. if it installs drivers then generally it will not work.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Jens_Madsen]

Permissions Denied

I downloaded the HP agent for ESX 3.x - un compressed it and moved the contents to a subfolder called HP in the root directory.

I CD'ed into the HP folder so my location is .\root\hp

within the HP folder is the installation script, which is called "installvm800a.sh"

when i fire the script by ./installvm800.sh

I get a "Permission Denied" error code returned

HELP HELP

[jackpal]

Set it executable with:

chmod 750 installvm800a.sh

then try again

[mcowger]

If you dont have an HP, the HP tools probably aren't going to work......

--Matt

[Jens_Madsen]

SORRY SORRY SORRY

I'm a clown when it comes to Linux

chmod +x fixed the permission problem

I got the HP Agent installed under SC

J

[Jens_Madsen]

It's an HP branded RAID controller, so I hope the HP System Insight Manager will handle the controller only, even thought that it's a HUGE piece of software just to monitor my RAID controller.

We had the controller left over from an HP server we were building.

I'll let you know how it went

Jens

[Texiwill]

Hello,

It may work... Good luck. YOu will need to look at the System Management Homepage to see if it picks up anything.

Best regards,

Edward L. Haletky

VMware Communities User Moderator

====

Author of the book 'VMWare ESX Server in the Enterprise: Planning and Securing Virtualization Servers', Copyright 2008 Pearson Education. CIO Virtualization Blog: http://www.cio.com/blog/index/topic/168354, As well as the Virtualization Wiki at http://www.astroarch.com/wiki/index.php/Virtualization

[Jens_Madsen]

NO GO

The VMWare agents from HP seems to only want to install if there is a genuine HP board in the server (I'm using and Intel board)

I get the serives installed and started, but the MIB's are not to be found in the SNMPD.conf

I tried "snmpwalk -v 1 localhost -c public enterprises | grep hp" and it returned nothing....

I alos peeked inside the snmpd.conf after installation with VI and only found VMWare references, no references to HP

SO NOW

I'm trying to install the RED HAT 3 agent specific to that controlelr, which is an RPM file.

Unfortunately when using "rpm -ivh .rpm" I get the following error message: *_Package is intended for a x86_64 architecture_ *

I found a tool to decompress the package and it gave me 3 directories files files and subfolders:

etc

opt

usr

now my question - Can I just copy those directories onto the SC or is there a trick to use RPM's for Red Hat 3 with ESX 3.5?????

Thanks

J

[mcowger]

NO!

See if you can find the 32bit version of that package.

--Matt

[Jens_Madsen]

I thought ESX was a 64-bit OS

So when using Red Hat 3 packages I should go for the 32 bit????

I have 16GB Ram in the machine

J

[mcowger]

The Service Console is a 32 bit environment (though the vmkernel, which is the important part is 64 bit). But, for the purposes of installing package, you need 32 bit ones.

--Matt

[Jens_Madsen]

I can only find AMD64/EM64T packages fro that card

Jens

[mcowger]

Probably because HP never sold that card without a 64bit host to go along with it.

You are likely out of luck.

--Matt

[Jens_Madsen]

I very grateful for all the help you guys have given me.

We just became a VMWare dealer, and this is + Linux is new to me (I'm actually enjoying this a bit - being a Windows system engineer)

Regard the Intel management, I'm going to try their out of band management without loading any software into the SC

Intel server boards has an optional (and sometimes built-in) BMC card that can be accessed thru assigning an additional IP and MAC address to one of the NIC's

This feature is normally used for out-of-band management regardless of the host OS running or not.

This way the Intel Windows Management Software will poll it's own NIC accross the network to get health stats without using the hardware layer.

Haven't tried the setup yet but I'll let you guys know.

Since VMWare is writing drivers for all the hardware - how come they haven't done any monitoring.

Running a single server with no RAID monitoring is dangerous enough, but when you start to putting all your eggs in one basket (i.e. 5-6 v-servers on one box) it becomes very important to monitor the hardware.

Makes no sense to me that this is NOT and issue that has any higher priority.

We contacted VMWare directly on the issue and were just directed us to a bunch of SDK's!!!

From: Chad Leeper
Sent: Thursday, May 22, 2008 3:24 PM
To: Cary Scheck
Subject: RE: Tech Question / Computer Condiments, Inc.
Hi Cary:
See if this helps

Chad Leeper | Systems Engineer | Partner Resource Center

I think this is definitely something that VMWare needs to start working on alittle bit more

What's your guys' thoughts on this?????

I'll post some more info on the Intel out-of-band monitoring when I get it implemented

Jens