Help Monitoring Servers

[Kevin Stanton]

I am looking for a couple of pointers, I am about to take possession of a nice new server room. I will be populating my New Cabs with HP ProLiant and Dell servers. It has been a long time since I have monitored servers, I have a network background.

I need to be able to monitor power supplies, hard disk’s, Raid Arrays, CPU’s in my servers.

I have What’s Up Gold, IPCheck server and a nice new APC NetBotz. I use what’s up gold to ping my servers and check on basic services. I use IPCheck to keep and eye on disk usage and to act as my syslog server. My NetBotz keeps and eye on my UPS and all the PDU’s in the Cab’s.

I have had a brief look at IPMI, but this does not seem to give me a great lot, running out of Ideas, could go back to SNMP.

[~sesh]

There are quite a few solutions to monitor the server. If you are looking for alternative or additional monitoring tools, I will talk specifically about the monitoring tools for HP servers.

1. System Management Homepage: Generally, you have monitoring agents when you install the ProLiant Support Pack. So you can check the health status of various components of the server through the System Management Homepage. More information at:
http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/agents/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

2. HP Systems Insight Manager: This is a monitoring tool that allows you to monitor a bunch of servers from one server, all at the same time. You can set traps for SNMP to generate alerts on your email, pager & so on. Moreover, you can install updates on the managed server from one place.
More information at:
http://h18013.www1.hp.com/products/servers/management/hpsim/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

3. HP Openview: The above two products are for HP specific products. HP Openview is similar to SIM but can monitor & manage more hardware.
More information at:
https://h10078.www1.hp.com/cda/hpms/display/main/hpms_home.jsp?zn=bto&cp=1_4011_100

Then for UPS & rack, there is HP Rack & Power Manager. More information at:
http://h18004.www1.hp.com/products/servers/proliantstorage/power-protection/software/index.html?jumpid=reg_R1002_USEN

[Kevin Stanton]

Thanks for the pointers.

However do we know of any more general Apps that can be used for different flavours Dell, Fujitsu servers.

[~sesh]

If you are looking for a hardware independent monitoring tool, you could use the HP Openview software (link in previous post), or you would need to opt for a third party solution.

I'm sure there are many solutions out there. I did a quick Google search & found a few results. However, just to name a few:

MonitorMagic - Server and Network Monitoring:
http://www.tools4ever.com/products/monitormagic/

Intellipool:
http://www.intellipool.se/

You can explore more options, as there are different applications for different purposes.

Good luck!

[~sesh]

One thing I forgot to mention. You should also be aware that the manufacturers of the equipment may not support installation of third-party applications.