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Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI)

Plugin: freeipmi.plugin Module: freeipmi

Overview

"Monitor enterprise server sensor readings, event log entries, and hardware statuses to ensure reliable server operations."

The plugin uses open source library IPMImonitoring to communicate with sensors.

This collector is supported on all platforms.

This collector supports collecting metrics from multiple instances of this integration, including remote instances.

The plugin needs setuid.

Default Behavior

Auto-Detection

This integration doesn't support auto-detection.

Limits

The default configuration for this integration does not impose any limits on data collection.

Performance Impact

Linux kernel module for IPMI can create big overhead.

Metrics

Metrics grouped by scope.

The scope defines the instance that the metric belongs to. An instance is uniquely identified by a set of labels.

The plugin does a speed test when it starts, to find out the duration needed by the IPMI processor to respond. Depending on the speed of your IPMI processor, charts may need several seconds to show up on the dashboard.

Per Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) instance

These metrics refer to the entire monitored application.

This scope has no labels.

Metrics:

MetricDimensionsUnit
ipmi.seleventsevents

Per sensor

Labels:

LabelDescription
sensorThe sensor name
typeOne of 45 recognized sensor types (Battery, Voltage...)
componentOne of 25 recognized components (Processor, Peripheral).

Metrics:

MetricDimensionsUnit
ipmi.sensor_statenominal, critical, warning, unknownstate
ipmi.sensor_temperature_ctemperatureCelsius
ipmi.sensor_temperature_ftemperatureFahrenheit
ipmi.sensor_voltagevoltageVolts
ipmi.sensor_ampereampereAmps
ipmi.sensor_fan_speedrotationsRPM
ipmi.sensor_powerpowerWatts
ipmi.sensor_reading_percentpercentage%

Alerts

The following alerts are available:

Alert nameOn metricDescription
ipmi_sensor_state ipmi.sensor_stateIPMI sensor ${label:sensor} (${label:component}) state

Setup

Prerequisites

Install freeipmi.plugin

When using our official DEB/RPM packages, the FreeIPMI plugin is included in a separate package named netdata-plugin-freeipmi which needs to be manually installed using your system package manager. It is not installed automatically due to the large number of dependencies it requires.

When using a static build of Netdata, the FreeIPMI plugin will be included and installed automatically, though you will still need to have FreeIPMI installed on your system to be able to use the plugin.

When using a local build of Netdata, you need to ensure that the FreeIPMI development packages (typically called libipmimonitoring-dev, libipmimonitoring-devel, or freeipmi-devel) are installed when building Netdata.

Preliminary actions

If you have not previously used IPMI on your system, you will probably need to run the ipmimonitoring command as root to initialize IPMI settings so that the Netdata plugin works correctly. It should return information about available sensors on the system.

Configuration

File

The configuration file name for this integration is netdata.conf. Configuration for this specific integration is located in the [plugin:freeipmi] section within that file.

The file format is a modified INI syntax. The general structure is:

[section1]
option1 = some value
option2 = some other value

[section2]
option3 = some third value

You can edit the configuration file using the edit-config script from the Netdata config directory.

cd /etc/netdata 2>/dev/null || cd /opt/netdata/etc/netdata
sudo ./edit-config netdata.conf

Options

The configuration is set using command line options:

# netdata.conf
[plugin:freeipmi]
command options = opt1 opt2 ... optN

To display a help message listing the available command line options:

./usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/freeipmi.plugin --help
Command options
NameDescriptionDefaultRequired
SECONDSData collection frequency.no
debugEnable verbose output.disabledno
no-selDisable System Event Log (SEL) collection.disabledno
reread-sdr-cacheRe-read SDR cache on every iteration.disabledno
interpret-oem-dataAttempt to parse OEM data.disabledno
assume-system-event-recordtreat illegal SEL events records as normal.disabledno
ignore-non-interpretable-sensorsDo not read sensors that cannot be interpreted.disabledno
bridge-sensorsBridge sensors not owned by the BMC.disabledno
shared-sensorsEnable shared sensors if found.disabledno
no-discrete-readingDo not read sensors if their event/reading type code is invalid.enabledno
ignore-scanning-disabledIgnore the scanning bit and read sensors no matter what.disabledno
assume-bmc-ownerAssume the BMC is the sensor owner no matter what (usually bridging is required too).disabledno
hostname HOSTRemote IPMI hostname or IP address.localno
username USERUsername that will be used when connecting to the remote host.no
password PASSPassword that will be used when connecting to the remote host.no
noauthcodecheck / no-auth-code-checkDon't check the authentication codes returned.no
driver-type IPMIDRIVERSpecify the driver type to use instead of doing an auto selection. The currently available outofband drivers are LAN and LAN_2_0, which perform IPMI 1.5 and IPMI 2.0 respectively. The currently available inband drivers are KCS, SSIF, OPENIPMI and SUNBMC.no
sdr-cache-dir PATHSDR cache files directory./tmpno
sensor-config-file FILESensors configuration filename.system defaultno
sel-config-file FILESEL configuration filename.system defaultno
ignore N1,N2,N3,...Sensor IDs to ignore.no
ignore-status N1,N2,N3,...Sensor IDs to ignore status (nominal/warning/critical).no
-vPrint version and exit.no
--helpPrint usage message and exit.no

Examples

Decrease data collection frequency

Basic example decreasing data collection frequency. The minimum update every is 5 (enforced internally by the plugin). IPMI is slow and CPU hungry. So, once every 5 seconds is pretty acceptable.

[plugin:freeipmi]
update every = 10

Disable SEL collection

Append to command options = the options you need.

Config
[plugin:freeipmi]
command options = no-sel

Ignore specific sensors

Specific sensor IDs can be excluded from freeipmi tools by editing /etc/freeipmi/freeipmi.conf and setting the IDs to be ignored at ipmi-sensors-exclude-record-ids.

However this file is not used by libipmimonitoring (the library used by Netdata's freeipmi.plugin).

To find the IDs to ignore, run the command ipmimonitoring. The first column is the wanted ID:

ID | Name | Type | State | Reading | Units | Event 1 | Ambient Temp | Temperature | Nominal | 26.00 | C | 'OK' 2 | Altitude | Other Units Based Sensor | Nominal | 480.00 | ft | 'OK' 3 | Avg Power | Current | Nominal | 100.00 | W | 'OK' 4 | Planar 3.3V | Voltage | Nominal | 3.29 | V | 'OK' 5 | Planar 5V | Voltage | Nominal | 4.90 | V | 'OK' 6 | Planar 12V | Voltage | Nominal | 11.99 | V | 'OK' 7 | Planar VBAT | Voltage | Nominal | 2.95 | V | 'OK' 8 | Fan 1A Tach | Fan | Nominal | 3132.00 | RPM | 'OK' 9 | Fan 1B Tach | Fan | Nominal | 2150.00 | RPM | 'OK' 10 | Fan 2A Tach | Fan | Nominal | 2494.00 | RPM | 'OK' 11 | Fan 2B Tach | Fan | Nominal | 1825.00 | RPM | 'OK' 12 | Fan 3A Tach | Fan | Nominal | 3538.00 | RPM | 'OK' 13 | Fan 3B Tach | Fan | Nominal | 2625.00 | RPM | 'OK' 14 | Fan 1 | Entity Presence | Nominal | N/A | N/A | 'Entity Present' 15 | Fan 2 | Entity Presence | Nominal | N/A | N/A | 'Entity Present' ...

freeipmi.plugin supports the option ignore that accepts a comma separated list of sensor IDs to ignore. To configure it set on netdata.conf:

Config
[plugin:freeipmi]
command options = ignore 1,2,3,4,...

Troubleshooting

Debug Mode

kimpi0 CPU usage


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