Headless Linux Hardware Monitoring

Server Administration
1

Hello All…So we have some Linux boxes out there that are really locked down (No SSH, ILO Access, etc). Could SH be used to monitor hardware on these devices? Specifically drives failing, etc? I am not sure it provides that type of access into a machine.
If not how are others handling hardware monitoring in such a situation? We have used Zabbix, etc in the past but due to the nature of the security on these devices we do not want to have more agent software installed that might allow compromise.

2

Sh can monitor the S.M.A.R.T status of the drives, running processes, etc. But, you would need to install the remote access agent. But if you already have simplehelp remote access on it your already good to go.
https://simple-help.com/management-guide#monitoring-alerts

I do have a large install that I monitor servers and devices using another product. PA Server Monitor. You would need to open up snmp and ssh. Due to the locked-down nature of your server, you would need to add firewall rules so that the server would only communicate with the monitoring software/server. The benefit of this software is that there is no agent.
https://www.poweradmin.com/products/server-monitoring/monitoring-information/linux-monitoring/

3

Thanks for that information…We have had limited luck with SH monitoring drive health…We had a couple Windows servers that were flagged as failed in a drive array but SH did not report it. Since these were part of an array one of them was in a predictive failure state and the other actually failed. So I am not sure why SH did not catch it.

Thanks for the information on PA Server Manager…I will need to check that out

4

I haven’t tried it, but you may be able to use PowerShell to create a custom monitor in simple-help.
https://dailysysadmin.com/KB/Article/4561/how-to-monitor-windows-raid-and-physical-disks-using-powershell/

I currently monitor the server drive health via the dell idracs. PA has an ipmi monitor that I use long with snmp traps and Syslog monitors. I also have the idrac send email alerts.

5

I already forgot you Said Linux. With simple help you could create a custom monitor to return the raid status:
https://raspberrypi.stackexchange.com/questions/94492/script-for-monitoring-raid-status

Again, haven’t tried it, but looks promising.

6

Thanks for the information!! I appreciate it. We would really like to be able to monitor hardware health on all servers both windows and Linux. And would like to avoid installing more agents for other products that call out to the Internet. We have used Zabbix in the past and it is solid but there were some security issues this past year that are concerning. We want to keep it simple. We do have some Linux repos that are smaller that do NOT have IDRAC or ILO so we will be relying on OS-native reporting.