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Dell iDRAC Hardware Monitoring

Use the iDRAC plugin to monitor the status of the iDRAC hardware, CPU cores and threads, fan rotations, memory size and more.

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Integrated Dell Remote Access Controller (iDRAC) is an integrated motherboard to oversee the various aspects of servers and mid-range systems sold by Dell. iDRAC monitoring is critical to know all kinds of hardware related events and its status including temperatures, fan speeds, power supply status, individual disk status and more.

This document details the following:

Performance Monitoring Metrics

Use our wide array of metrics and get notified of hazardous errors that require your attention. Keep track of unexpected trends through our metric graphs and troubleshoot as quickly as possible. Apart from the main iDRAC plugin, we provide separate plugin extensions to monitor the various components of the iDRAC server in an exclusive, fault-tolerant manner.

iDRAC plugin

Hardware monitoring is vital as it provides a warning on potentially critical conditions. This is the main plugin to monitor the status of the main hardware components including battery, fan rotations, CPU cores, power sources and sensors, power unit, and vdisk of the iDRAC server

iDRAC battery plugin

The idrac_battery plugin gives the usage, status, location and state of the battery present in the iDRAC server

iDRAC memory plugin

The idrac_memory monitors memory usage in iDRAC servers

iDRAC fan plugin

The idrac_fan monitoring extension provides the status, fan rotations (in rpm) and its location in the iDRAC server

iDRAC CPU plugin

The idrac_cpu plugin provides the state, status, cores and threads of CPU in iDRAC servers

iDRAC physical disk plugin

The idrac_pdisk plugin extension monitors the state, size and type of all the physical disks present in the Dell iDRAC servers

iDRAC sensor plugin

The idrac_sensor plugin monitors all the sensors present in iDRAC servers

iDRAC power unit plugin

The idrac_powerunit plugin extension gives the state, redundancy status, power consumption (Watt) and the status of all the power units present in the Dell iDRAC server

iDRAC virtual disk plugin

The idrac_vdisk plugin extension monitors the state, size and badblocks of all the virtual disks present in the iDRAC server

iDRAC power source plugin

The idrac_powersource monitoring extension monitors all the power sources including the status, power consumption, current consumption, input/output voltages (ivolt/ovolt) and Watts (iwatt/owatt) of iDRAC server

Prerequisites

  • Download and install the Site24x7 server monitoring agent (Linux | Windows) in the server where you plan to run the plugin.
  • Ensure you have Python 3 or a higher version installed on your server.
  • For Linux servers, install snmpwalk.
    To do this, execute the following command in your server:
    a. On CentOS/RedHat, install snmpwalk using Yum
    yum install net–snmp–utils
    b. On Ubuntu, install snmpwalk using apt-get
    sudo apt–get install snmp
    After installation, export the net-snmp path in the $PATH variable. For example:
    export PATH=$PATH:/var/lib/net-snmp/bin
    Then, test SNMP walk using the following command:
    snmpwalk -v -c
  • For Windows servers, follow these steps for installation.

Plugin Installation

Supported versions: 1 and 2c

  • Create a folder named idrac.
  • Download the following files from our GitHub repository and place them in the idrac folder.
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/idrac/idrac/idrac.py
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/idrac/idrac/idrac.cfg
    wget https://raw.githubusercontent.com/site24x7/plugins/master/idrac/idrac/SNMPUtil.py
  • To check if the plugin is working, execute the command below with appropriate arguments and check for a valid JSON output with applicable metrics and their corresponding values.
    python idrac.py --hostname "localhost" --snmp_version "2c" --snmp_community_str "public"
  • Add the applicable configurations in the idrac.cfg file.
    [idrac_main]
    hostname = "localhost"
    snmp_version = "2c"
    snmp_community_str = "public"
  • Follow the steps in this article to learn how to run the Python script on a Windows server. This isn't needed for Linux.
  • Move the idrac folder to the Site24x7 server monitoring plugin directory.

    For Linux: /opt/site24x7/monagent/plugins/

    For Windows: C:\Program Files (x86)\Site24x7\WinAgent\monitoring\plugins/

The agent will automatically execute the plugin within five minutes and display performance data in Site24x7.
To view the plugin monitor and associated performance charts:
  • Log in to Site24x7.
  • Navigate to Plugins and click the required monitor.

Plugin Contribution

Feel free to contribute to our existing plugin integrations and come up with suggestions or feedback on our Community.

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Troubleshooting Tips