Questions about monitoring Dell servers

[Jason Lixfeld]

Well, I managed to sort it out.  The grey area was that the Dell BMC  
just needed an IP, username and password configured on it.  I was  
under the mistaken impression that the OpenIPMI needed to be  
installed to speak the BMC, but ipmitools does that just fine.   
Between the BMC and megarc for the raid status, I have everything I  
need!  Well, with the exception of SNMP traps -- still haven't  
figured out how to set the trap host and community, but if worst  
comes to worst, I can use used net-snmp and use the exec options in  
snmpd.conf.

On 17-May-06, at 8:40 AM, Bill Moran wrote:

> 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.
>