Server Hardware Monitoring App

sidethink · 26 Jun 2008 at 13:31

I have a bit of a dilema - I have a large estate of essentially Intel server chassis and motherboards that I manage and monitor with a pretty awful application called Compuware ServerVantage.

The ServerVantage agent runs on each machine watching for events written to the Event Logs by Intel's motherboard tools and then reports these back to my central control server.

My problem is that the version of Intel's motherboard tools we use is quite old and won't work with 2008 server hardware and their newest version is designed to work with MOM, not my Compuware application.

I need an app that can monitor fan speeds, voltages, PSU etc for errors and write events to the Event Log - either that or I'm going to have to bite the bullet and look at drastically changing my monitoring estate.

Anyone have any ideas? The product I currently use is ISM to generate the local alerts.

rick827 · 26 Jun 2008 at 14:03

Frankly i'd just get a proper SNMP setup. You actually log on your boxes to check things?

Sp00n · 26 Jun 2008 at 14:07

gfi server monitor?

sidethink · 27 Jun 2008 at 08:33

All SNMP will do is grab measurements and data - I need something to generate that data first.

If these were HP boxes it would be Insight, on Dell, Openmanage but these are Intel servers.

Sp00n · 27 Jun 2008 at 09:40

Intel® System Management Software 2.0 ?

sidethink · 27 Jun 2008 at 11:03

Yep, thats the one that comes with the new servers but the agent only seems to talk to MOM rather than just writing events into the local Event Log - if you know different, I'd be very grateful to hear about it.

My techies tell me that there is no local console to configure the Intel agent any longer, it just installs and you point it at MOM (Intel provide a cut down version which for a variety of reasons, I can't deploy).

We have used the older versions of the Intel software to just write pertinent events into the log and then capture that using another agent. But the old versions don't work with the new motherboards.

I've got 4000 of these servers out there and now I need to introduce a new motherboard design. Its a royal pain in the butt!

ricky1981 · 27 Jun 2008 at 17:55

sidethink said:
All SNMP will do is grab measurements and data - I need something to generate that data first.

If these were HP boxes it would be Insight, on Dell, Openmanage but these are Intel servers.

Both of those are cut down versions of Altiris (now owned by Symantec), try www.altiris.com, you probably want the Server Monitor Solution

drop me a line if you want details as I've just done two projects using this.

zetec452 · 27 Jun 2008 at 19:06

www.n-able.com have a great monitoring product called N-Central. Worth a look.