You need to monitor equipment, but your favorite Zabbix system doesn't have a ready-made template for this type of equipment. Sound familiar? Everyone handles it differently. One administrator searches for a solution online. Another develops their own. And some simply give up on the task. The Zabbix team is currently expanding the set of pre-installed templates with each new release. For example, the upcoming version 5.0 will feature a new universal monitoring template. servers via IPMI — Template Server by IPMI. Colleagues asked for help debugging its operation on equipment from various manufacturers. For us, this is also a unique opportunity to test drive the new functionality. We're sharing the results.
What does the new template look like?
In order to monitor your server using this template, you need to create a “network node” in the system with configured monitoring via IPMI and attach the Template Server by IPMI template to it (Fig. 1). There will be no detailed description of this operation here: detailed instructions are in the official Zabbix documentation.
Rice. 1. Template Server by IPMI
Consider the principles of this template and its structure.
The template is based on the ipmitool utility. It allows you to get the necessary statistics from the equipment via IPMI. Using the functionality of this utility and obtaining all the necessary data is now available to the user through the web interface using the IPMI agent item type, and the special ipmi.get key. This became possible only due to the appearance of the ipmi.get key in the new version.
In the Template Server by IPMI template, the Item Get IPMI sensors data element is responsible for organizing the collection of information using this new functionality (Fig. 2).
Rice. 2. Item Get IPMI sensors
As a result of the work of the Item Get IPMI sensors data element, information about the state of the equipment in the structured JSON format appears in the Zabbix system (Fig. 3).
Rice. 3. An example of the result of item Get IPMI sensors
In addition to the Item Get IPMI sensors data element, the template also has two detection rules Discrete sensors discovery (Fig. 4) and Threshold sensors discovery (Fig. 5). These discovery rules use the JSON resulting from the Item Get IPMI sensors item to automatically create new items and triggers. This is clearly seen in the figures below in the Master item section.
Rice. 4. Discrete sensors discovery rule
Rice. 5. Threshold sensors discovery rule
Why does the template use two discovery rules instead of one?
Discrete sensors discovery ensures the automatic creation of data elements, which in their values are of the "string" type. And the Threshold sensors discovery rule allows you to automatically create data elements that have the “number” type in their values. In addition, this rule can form up to 6 triggers for each data element (Fig. 6).
Values for trigger conditions are taken from JSON, that is, from the device itself. Triggers are created for 6 thresholds: lower dangerous, lower critical, lower non-critical, upper non-critical, upper critical, upper dangerous. If the value for some threshold is missing from the JSON, the trigger is not created.
In the generated trigger, the threshold can be overridden at the Zabbix level. However, in our opinion, the most logical way to change the trigger is to transform it at the hardware level. How to do this is usually indicated in the instructions for the device.
Rice. 6. 6 trigger prototypes of Threshold sensors discovery
Harness and let's go
To test the Template Server by IPMI template, we selected servers from three manufacturers: IBM, HP, and Huawei. A few minutes after the connection, the results shown in the table were obtained from them.
Table 1. Template Server by IPMI test results
Equipment manufacturer
Equipment model
Number of automatically generated items
Number of automatically created triggers
HP
ProLiant DL360 G5
20
24
Huawei
1288H V5
175
56
IBM
System X
139
27
All equipment was successfully able to be monitored using a new template and a new key ipmi.key.
We were able to get the most data from Huawei equipment, and the least from HP. The reason for this lies in the difference in the hardware of the devices and has nothing to do with the quality of the new template.
In the screenshots below, you can see the items and triggers automatically created by the template.
Rice. 7. Automatically generated data elements
Rice. 8. Template automatically generated triggers
* * *
Template Server by IPMI proved to be the best. It turned out to be easy to use and, most importantly, “universal”.
The Template Server by IPMI template will be included in the list of basic templates of the Zabbix 5.0 version. For our part, we strongly support this approach of the manufacturer. Even if specialists are forced to create their own specialized templates, we recommend taking as a basis the approaches laid down by the manufacturer himself and observed in Template Server by IPMI. First, use automatic item discovery using master item. And secondly, to apply automatic detection of triggers using master item in cases where it is possible.
Well, we are looking forward to the release of Zabbix 5.0 in the near future!
Author: Dmitry Untila, architect of monitoring systems at Jet Infosystems
Source: habr.com
