Skip to content

Template: ESXi HP Smart Array Monitoring

This is the template and instructions for monitoring HP Smart Array controllers as well as physical and logical drives attached to them. ESXi can be quite a hassle to monitor properly but you can get very far using Zabbix SSH checks.

Requirements

How it works

Due to limitations of VMWare ESXi, all items in this template are “SSH Check” based. This means all checks are performed via SSH connections.

The item “ssh.run[hpraid.data.retrieval]” connects to your host and creates the file “/tmp/hp-raid-data-harvester.out”. This file contains all information about your Smart Array controllers, disks and logical drives.

Discovery is performed by crawling through the data gathered in “/tmp/hp-raid-data-harvester.out”. Discovered physical and logical devices and corresponding checks are then automatically populated for your host(s).

All scripts are located within the template which means that no configuration of your ESXi host(s) is necessary. A user with SSH access is all that is needed

Disclaimer

This template should work with any number of controllers, disks and/or logical drives, however I have only been able to test it with disks and logical drives spanning two controllers. Also, scripts, template and instructions have only been tested on VMware ESXi 6.0 update 1b.

This template is based on scripts and template made by lesovsky.

Instructions – ESXi HP Smart Array Monitoring

  1. First, head over to Zabbix Share to fetch the template.
  2. Enable SSH and add an SSH user for Zabbix to use, onto your ESXi system(s), with read-only rights.
  3. On your ESXi system(s), edit “/etc/security/access.conf” and after the last line starting with a ‘+’ sign, add a new line with “+:zabbixUsername:ALL”.
  4. For persistence, add this line into “/etc/rc.local.d/local.sh” before “exit 0” to ensure “/etc/security/access.conf” is updated upon reboot:
    sed -i ‘/root/s/.*/&\n\+:zabbixUsername:ALL/’ /etc/security/access.conf
  5. Import template “esxi_hp_smart_array.xml” into Zabbix.
  6. Edit template macros {$ZABBIX_SSH_USER} and {$ZABBIX_SSH_PASS}.
  7. Assign the template to your ESXi server(s).

3 Comments

  1. Alexander Gogolev Alexander Gogolev

    Change path in template for ESXi 6.0 and high
    ESXi 5.5 -> /opt/hp/hpssacli/bin/hpssacli
    ESXi 6.5 -> /opt/smartstorageadmin/ssacli/bin/ssacli

  2. Kirill Kirill

    Greatings! Your solution is great and it works on all the servers that I have, except one that has: Smart Array P420. hp-raid-data-harvester.out has complete information, but autodiscovery finds only one item: Logical Volumes Discovery: Logical volume hpraid.ld.status.5:1 status.

    Maybe is there any way to fix it?

  3. Vic Seitz Vic Seitz

    I tried your solution on a HP Microserver Gen10 with a E208i-p SR controller. The only item I get is “Smart Array: Data Retrieval”.

    I hoped to get the RAID array and disk status in Zabbix to build notifications for disk failures (since this Gen10 Microserver has no option for an iLO)

    The ssa cli utility on the ESXi host itself works fine and gives me all information pulled from the RAID controller.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.