Tuesday, February 2, 2016

Monitoring / managing Lenovo servers with SNMP




MAX SNMP and Lenovo servers

I know it's the old one.
Lenovo is getting more attention for IT support personnel with their new server line of products.  So can these devices be monitored using the MAX RemoteManagement platform?  Must you have a package supporting Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)? Or are there alternatives?

There is a way to monitor Lenovo via SNMP through MAX RM today.


Our Server-based SNMP monitoring Check is going to be the best route to check the health of the RAID controller.  It's an LSI backplane, of which we already have some pre-defined checks available in the dashboard.

Follow these steps to get it done. 
We'll assume you've installed the MAX agent on the ThinkServer appliance.
From the ThinkServer appliance OS, install the SNMP Service
      Step 1. Select the New Feature

 
      Step 2. Select the SNMP Services

Next we need to add the management software for LSI - the LSI MegaRAID Storage Manager (MSM) Application.  Information about your LSI and managing it can be found here if you don't already have it -
http://www.lenovo.com/images/products/server/pdfs/tech_resources/Managing_LSI_Adapters.pdf,

This indicates the software is downloaded directly from LSI*, something like this:
http://www.lsi.com/products/raid-controllers/pages/megaraid-sas-9260-8i.aspx#tab/tab4

Once you've gathered the software for your particular controller and installed it, add the check in your MAX dashboard for that ThinkServer appliance -


Choose from the LSI what check or checks you want to add (complete the addition of each one-at-a-time)


You may need to modify Hostname / IP Address from localhost to 127.0.0.1 OR the internal Static IP, but I would suggest trying with localhost .
Using a hostname may be problematic as it would be dependent on Firewall rules and/or SNMP Service Configurations.



That's all there is to it!! 

*LSI has apparently been acquired by Avago Technologies / Broadcom, so if you end up at avagotech.com, don't be alarmed.