Questions about monitoring Dell servers

[Bill Moran]

On Tue, 16 May 2006 19:15:06 -0400
Jason Lixfeld <jason+lists.freebsd-questions at lixfeld.ca> wrote:
> 
> On 16-May-06, at 1:01 PM, Bill Moran wrote:
> 
> > DRAC is irrelevant to FreeBSD.  Configure it in the BIOS (give it an
> > IP and the like) and you can use a web browser to get a console  
> > window.
> > (True console, so that you can access the BIOS during boot and
> > everything).
> 
> I can configure an IP address on the BMC, but that's obviously  
> different than the DRAC.  Before, when I tried to configure an IP on  
> the BMC, I couldn't see any IP info for it at all in the system.  
> Couldn't ping it, couldn't see a mac address for it, nothing so I  
> wasn't sure if the BMC networking portion would work without the DRAC  
> or not.

BMC == IPMI, correct?

IPMI and DRAC are separate and independent.  I don't think you can use
the same IP address for both, although I've never tried.  I don't think
Dell's BMC responds to pings, but I could be wrong.

If, by saying "in the system" you mean that you're checking ifconfig, then
you're not _going_ to see it there, as the hardware handles it and
FreeBSD is unaware that it's going on.

> > Install ipmitool and use it to access IPMI over the network.
> 
> I tried that too, but based on above, I couldn't get the BMC to be  
> seen on the network.

Sounds like a more Dell-specific issue to me.  Work within their framework
(I think they have Windows-based tools) until you can contact IPMI via
the network, then I'm betting you'll be able to contact it with
ipmitool.

> > We have a central machine that monitors all our servers via a Nagios
> > plugin to ipmitool.  I can't offer any advice on getting OpenIPMI
> > working.
> 
> Is there a particular benefit to OpenIPMI vs. FreeIPMI?

I have no idea.  We don't use either.

> I'm still a little fuzzy on the IP capabilities of IPMI vs DRAC.

There really is no "vs.".  Both IPMI and DRAC are accessible over an
IP network.  During the BIOS boot, you'll have menus available for
configuring both.  You can enable one, the other, or both, or neither.
They are two different technologies intended to serve two different
purposes, but there is some overlap in their capabilities.  DRAC
provides a web interface for monitoring and control.  DRAC includes
a console over IP feature that is probably its greatest strength.
IPMI is it's own protocol, thus anyone with an itching can write a
client to access the IPMI data or send IPMI commands.  IPMI doesn't
have console capability.  Both allow monitoring of hardware sensors.

-- 
Bill Moran
Collaborative Fusion Inc.