OpenManage Essentials not showing hard drive information for ESXi 5.0 systems.

Hi and thanks for the post.

Can you double check that you did the steps we list out in the ESXi setup whitepaper?

Have you done the SNMP configuration steps on ESXi to direct the alerts to the OME server (step 4)?

Thanks,

Rob

en.community.dell.com/.../19446745.aspx

also...

OMSA VIB 7.0 not 6.5 should be installed

ESXi 5 build version should be greater than 504890

Rob

6.5 had issues that were fixed in 7.

See if that helps.

If you are referring to: en.community.dell.com/.../20071085.aspx

I had the snmp enabled but I did not have the traps turned on.  I turned them on.  I am getting alerts from the esxi box now but the hard drive information is still not populating.

Interestingly enough, the hardware logs are showing up now as well.  Does this mean OME makes the esxi box send the logs via traps?  I know the OMSA didn't because it worked without snmp turned on the esxi box at all.  Maybe something just worked loose with all the playing with it I have been doing.

Still need the hard drive information though.

Where would you get that build?  I can only get build 469512 from the vmware site.  Also, why would the OMSA VIB 6.5 work with the OMSA and not OME?  I will go look for the VIB 7.0 but bringing down a server with a bunch of virtuals on it is not the best solution.  That will take time and planning and notification of all the affected people etc....

H/W logs from the link on the right side of the device tree?  Yeah, those are pulled real-time via SNMP when you click on them.

Ok, I switched to playing with a test server that is not in production and I never really needed monitoring on.  It was setup with the same ESXi and OMSA.  I could connect to it using a linux box with OMSA on it like I could to the other box.  It worked fine.

Next I put the esxi update1 in and restarted.  It came up showing build 623860.  I could still connect using the OMSA linux server and see everything.  OME didn't change.  Still no hard drive information.

I then updated the OMSA on ESXi to 7.0.  I now cannot connect to the ESXi server using the OMSA linux box.  OME gets even less information than it did before.  I removed the OpenManage 7.0 vib and put the 6.5 back in and it all came back to where it was.  I put 7.0 back in and it broke again.  Doing a yum update on the linux box does not update anything from the dell open manage repo so I don't think there are any updates for that.  Looks like 7.0 does not work.

I am not physically at the location so I cannot use the cd you pointed to above to update drivers etc...

I guess it just comes down to, why can't OME see the same things OMSA can when they use the same agent?  OMSA can see the drives with or without snmp on.  They both use WS-Man so they should both be able to get the same info and they do except for the hard drives.  I can see how having the snmp traps would be useful to get immediate failures but I am just interested in having OME go look at the inventory every so often and tell me if a drive has failed.  I would be ok with getting snmp traps, which OME is receiving from esxi, but it doesn't do any good if it doesn't know about the drives.

Hi,

Thanks for the updates. OME currently talks to VMWare ESXi provider using WS-MAN to get the hardware inventory and it also talks to OMSA using WS-MAN to get the hardware health. OME also receives SNMP traps from ESXi host.

If you want to monitor for hard drive failures, you can send SNMP traps from ESXi host to OME which should generate a trap on hard drive failure. You can also monitor overall system health from OME using WS-MAN which should change from normal on hard drive failure.

OMSA 7.0 VIB may not be supporting ESXi 5 update 1 yet. It would be good to open a support ticket and they can investigate if there are any specific issues. Here is the number 800-945-3355

Regards

Abhijit

Thanks for the updates.

Regarding the hard drives, hard drive inventory is different from hard drive health. If there is hard drive failure, OMSA will change the status of hardware health from normal. OME gathers this health status and it is shown under the agent information table. This staus is checked every hour by default and you will be able to see that status on inventory page as well as in the device tree for the server.

Regarding inventory, OME currently gathers the inventory information from VMWare's provider. The next version of OME coming in Q3/Q4 will gather and combine the inventory from multiple sources (VMWare's provider, OMSA and iDrac)

Regards

Abhijit

Ok, so the answer is wait until Q3/Q4 and upgrade OME to be able to see the drives.

Thank you.

Yes, earlier this weekend I figured out that if I moved the timeout for WS-MAN to the maximum the hardware logs started populating.  I didn't think it would have anything to do with snmp since the linux OMSA server could pull all of that information with just WS-MAN.  It looks like it was just timing out for the hardware logs in OME.  At least with 6.5 that is.  With 7.0 nothing works with OME or OMSA on the linux box.

The problem that still exists is that OME just does not seem to ask about storage at all.  It doesn't mention anything about hard drives so I don't see how it would know if there is a problem with a drive.

A trap would work but most of the systems being monitored are the free ESXi and that does not allow you to enable snmp.  At least it doesn't after you update them like I did my testing box.  It just tells you about licensing restrictions.

I will try to call the number you provided but I don't have any support contracts on these boxes.  Not sure if Dell will want to talk to me.  :)

it seems you already have it resolved and this information has been passed along to the right people involved.  

it is best if you call in with a tag that has warranty support,  however if you call in with an expired tag, we are known to get your question answered anyway.  

Yes. The hard drive inventoy information is not available from VMWare's provider. With the next version, OME will be able to gather the information from more sources and display that in the inventory page.

I too have OMSA 7 and ESXi 5. While I don't get much hard drive info I get emails when a drive or array fails or is degraded. That just happened this morning. So where does this info come from? This was the WHOLE reason for me installing the Dell plug in for VMware and OME, so that when a drive goes bad it notifies me.That actually works.

I too get the question mark inside the diamond as well. Is there still something wrong.