Overview
In this technical article, we will cover the installation of Nagios-XI and Dell OpenManage Plug-In for Nagios-XI on a management node running CentOS. Following sections describe in detail the step-by-step instructions for installation and configuration of not only Nagios-XI and Dell OpenManage Plug-In but also the prerequisites that need to be installed and configured as well. These steps have been performed on the latest version of Nagios XI 64-bit virtual appliance running in VMware Workstation Player 12 on a Windows 7 Enterprise Edition host OS.
Step 1: Install Nagios XI Virtual Appliance
Nagios XI is available as a virtual machine (VM) image which can be downloaded from the official Nagios product download page. This is really useful as with a few additional configuration you can have a fully functional Nagios XI setup running and monitoring your data center or IT infrastructure in no time.
- Download VMware 64 bit virtual machine image from https://www.nagios.com/downloads/nagios-xi/. At the time of writing this article, the latest Nagios XI VMware 64 bit OVA image is running:
- Linux OS: CentOS 6.8
- Nagios XI v5.3.2 with Nagios-Core v4.1.1
- You will need a ESX Server, VMware Workstation, Player or VirtualBox to run the virtual machine. In this article, we are using VMware Workstation Player 12 running on a Windows 7 Enterprise Edition host OS to run the Nagios-XI VM.
- Please read the Virtual Machine Documentation to setup and configure the Nagios XI. We strongly recommend that you also go through a very useful article on Additional Configuration Steps after Deploying the Nagios-XI VM available on Nagios-Exchange.
Step 2: Install Pre-requisites for Dell OpenManage Plug-In for Nagios XI
Prior to installing Dell OpenManage Plug-in for Nagios XI, there are certain prerequisites or dependencies that must be installed on the management node. Following is the list of pre-requisites and their criticality (mandatory or optional) for Dell OM Plug-In:
- Perl Net-IP Module [mandatory]: provides functions to deal with IPv4/IPv6 addresses that are used by the OpenManage Plug-in’s check scripts for host and services discovery.
- Perl Net-SNMP Module [mandatory]: provides high-level interfaces to retrieve or update information on a remote host using the SNMP protocol and is used by the OpenManage Plug-in’s check scripts for SNMP communication with Dell devices.
- Perl Socket6 Module [optional]: provides glue routines to the various IPv6 functions that are used by the OpenManage plug-in for IPv6 host and services discovery and monitoring.
- Perl bindings for Open-WSMAN (WS-Management) [mandatory]: provides the Perl bindings for the Openwsman client API. Openwsman is an open source implementation of the WS-Management protocol and is used by OpenManage plug-in for the Agent-less monitoring of Dell devices using iDRAC.
- Perl SNMPTT (SNMP Trap Translator) Module [optional]: SNMP trap handler written in Perl for use with Net-SNMP / UCD-SNMP snmptrapd program. This module is an optional prerequisite and required for monitoring incoming SNMP traps from Dell devices.
- Dell RACADM (Remote Access Controller Admin) [optional]: command line tool that allows for remote or local management of Dell servers via the iDRAC. RACADM is required for monitoring component attribute information of Dell Chassis such as fan speed (RPM), amperage, voltage and power of PSUs and health of I/O module.
Install Perl Net-IP Module
Dell OpenManage Plug-In requires Perl Net-IP module version 1.26 or above to be installed. On CentOS 7, Perl Net-IP v1.26 can be installed using 'yum' package manager from the 'base' repository, whereas, on CentOS 6.8, the version of Perl Net-IP module that is available in the base respository is v1.25.
So, we will download and install the version 1.25 of Perl Net-IP module manually from source for CentOS 6.8.
| CentOS 6.8 |
[root@localhost ~]# cd /tmp [root@localhost tmp]# wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/M/MA/MANU/Net-IP-1.26.tar.gz [root@localhost tmp]# tar -zxvf Net-IP-1.26.tar.gz [root@localhost tmp]# cd Net-IP-1.26 [root@localhost Net-IP-1.26]# perl Makefile.PL [root@localhost Net-IP-1.26]# make [root@localhost Net-IP-1.26]# make all [root@localhost Net-IP-1.26]# make install |
Install Perl Net-SNMP Module
Dell OpenManage Plug-In requires Perl Net-SNMP module version 6.0.1 or above to be installed. Perl Net-SNMP module versions that is available on the update repository for both CentOS 7 and 6.8 is older than 6.0.1. So, like Net-IP module above, we will download and install the latest perl-Net-SNMP module manually from source.
| CentOS 6.8 |
[root@localhost ~]# cd /tmp [root@localhost tmp]# wget http://search.cpan.org/CPAN/authors/id/D/DT/DTOWN/Net-SNMP-v6.0.1.tar.gz [root@localhost tmp]# tar -zxvf Net-SNMP-v6.0.1.tar.gz [root@localhost tmp]# cd Net-SNMP-v6.0.1 [root@localhost Net-SNMP-v6.0.1]# perl Makefile.PL [root@localhost Net-SNMP-v6.0.1]# make [root@localhost Net-SNMP-v6.0.1]# make all [root@localhost Net-SNMP-v6.0.1]# make install |
Install Perl Socket6 Module
Dell OpenManage Plug-In requires Perl Socket6 module version 0.23 or later to be installed. On CentOS 6.8 as well as CentOS 7, Perl Socket6 v0.23 can be installed using yum package manager from the base repository. In this case, Nagios XI virtual machine already come pre-installed with perl Socket6 v0.23. However, if you still need to install it then please follow the instructions listed below:
| CentOS 6.8 |
[root@localhost ~]# yum install perl-Socket6 |
Install Perl bindings for Openwsman
Perl bindings for Openwsman and all of its associated dependencies can be installed on both CentOS 7 and CentOS 6.8 using the yum package manager from the EPEL repository.
| CentOS 6.8 |
[root@localhost ~]# yum install libwsman1 openwsman-perl |
Install Perl SNMPTT (SNMP Trap Translator) Module
- SNMPTT can be installed using yum package manager from the EPEL repository on both CentOS 6.8 and CentOS 7. We will also install net-snmp-perl module since snmptt requires it.
[root@localhost ~]# yum install snmptt
[root@localhost ~]# yum install net-snmp-perl
- Edit snmptt.ini: Once installed, we will configure SNMPTT to run as a daemon process rather than a standalone process by editing the /etc/snmp/snmptt.ini configuration file. Let us also enable the DNS resolution and enhanced logging options.
[root@localhost ~]# vi /etc/snmp/snmptt.ini
# SNMPTT v1.4beta2 Configuration File
[General]
dns_enable = 1
net_snmp_perl_enable = 1
translate_log_trap_oid = 1
[Logging]
stdout_enable = 1
log_enable = 1
log_file = /var/log/snmptt/snmptt.log
log_system_enable = 1
log_system_file = /var/log/snmptt/snmpttsystem.log
unknown_trap_log_enable = 1
unknown_trap_log_file = /var/log/snmptt/snmpttunknown.log
[Debugging]
DEBUGGING = 1
DEBUGGING_FILE = /var/log/snmptt.debug
DEBUGGING_FILE_HANDLER = /var/log/snmptt/snmptthandler.debug - Edit snmptrapd.conf: We will need to also modify the snmptrapd configuration file to set snmptt as the default SNMP trap handler.
[root@localhost ~]# vi /etc/snmp/snmptrapd.conf
# Add the following lines
traphandle default /usr/sbin/snmptthandler
disableAuthorization yes - Configure both snmptt and snmptrapd services to start on OS boot:
[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig snmptrapd on
[root@localhost ~]# chkconfig snmptt on
- Restart both the snmptt and snmptrapd services.
[root@localhost ~]# service snmptt start
[root@localhost ~]# service snmptrapd start
Install Dell RACADM
RACADM can be installed from the Dell linux repository. In order to do this, we will setup the Dell linux repository first and then use the yum package manager to install the srvadmin-idrac7 package and all of its associated dependencies. After installation is complete, it is recommended to log out and then login so that $PATH variable is updated to use the racadm from command line.
[root@localhost ~]# wget -q -O -http://linux.dell.com/repo/hardware/latest/bootstrap.cgi | bash [root@localhost ~]# yum install srvadmin-idrac7 |
Step 3: Install the Dell OpenManage Plug-In for Nagios XI
Now that we have successfully installed all the pre-requisites, it is time to get on with the installation of OpenManage Plug-In.
- Please download and install the Dell OpenManage Plug-In for Nagios XI as per the installation instructions provided in the Installation Guide packaged with the plugin zipped tarball.
- We also recommend that you go through post-installation section in the Installation Guide to configure the SNMP alerts / traps and Alert Knowledge Base (KB) articles.