How to monitor HPE ProLiant servers with Paessler PRTG

Originally published on November 11, 2022 by Jasmin Kahriman
Last updated on January 23, 2024 • 16 minute read

This is my fourth article about monitoring physical servers with Paessler PRTG. The first three articles were about Dell PowerEdge, IBM System X and Fujitsu servers.

If you want to jump right into the tutorial video, just click the play button below!

In today’s article, I will talk about HPE ProLiant servers. ProLiant is a brand that was originally developed by Compaq and is currently marketed by HPE. There are two form factors available: Modular Line (ML) and Density Line (DL). ML servers are tower based and DL are rack based.

The procedure for monitoring ML or DL servers is the same.

HPE ProLiant DL380 Gen10

Some remarks about PRTG sensors

PRTG supports five different sensors to monitor the health state of your HPE ProLiant servers.
If you are running HPE Generation 9 or earlier, you need to install HPE Insight Management Agents and HPE Insight Management WBEM Providers on the target device.
If you are running HPE Generation 10, you need to install HPE Agentless Management and the HPE Agentless Management Service on on the target device.
If you are running HPE Generation 10, use iLO interface as a parent device for sensors.
The HPE ProLiant sensors support iLO v3. We recommend that you use at least iLO 4.
All sensors support IPv4 and IPv6.
As all sensors are SNMP based, they have very low performance impact.

Step 1: Enable SNMP via iLO

PRTG sensors for monitoring HPE ProLiant servers are based on SNMP. That means you need to enable SNMP within iLO. iLO stands for Integrated Lights Out and it is a management interface used to configure your HPE ProLiant server and services.

Depending on the version of iLO you use, SNMP settings may be located in a different location on the UI. I use iLO v4.

1. Login to your iLO interface via the web console.

2. Click on IMM Management in the main menu and then click Network.

3. Select Enable SNMP and type community string under Community String.

4. Close the UI

Step 2: Add HPE ProLiant server to PRTG

In the second step, you need to add your HPE ProLiant server to the PRTG device tree. You can use the IP or DNS name of your server.

Add HPE ProLiant server to PRTG

In case you don't use the default SNMP settings (community string and port), you need to configure SNMP settings on the parent device within PRTG („HPE ProLiant“ > Settings > Credentials for SNMP Devices).

If you use the default SNMP credentials, there is nothing to change.

Credentials for SNMP

Step 3: Add sensors

The SNMP HPE ProLiant System Health sensor monitors the system health of an HPE ProLiant server via the SNMP. You can get the state of different components including CPU, PSU, disks, temperature and voltage.

Redundant array of independent disks (RAID) controllers that have no hard disks assigned might cause the Down status. In this case, deactivate the respective controllers in the HPE ProLiant BIOS to avoid sensor errors.

This sensor has predefined limits for temperatures and broken frames. You can change these limits individually in the channel settings.

HPE ProLiant System Health sensor

The SNMP HPE ProLiant Physical Disk sensor monitors a physical disk in an HPE server via SNMP. This sensor gives you insight into read and write errors, disk status and condition, S.M.A.R.T. status, and sectors.

The sensor only shows Disk Status and no other channels if it runs in "Limited Monitoring" mode. For more information, see SNMP HPE ProLiant Physical Disk sensor not showing all information.

This sensor uses lookups to determine the status values of one or more channels. This means that possible states are defined in a lookup file. You can change the behavior of a channel by editing the lookup file that the channel uses. For details, see section Define Lookups.

HPE ProLiant Physical Disk sensor

The SNMP HPE ProLiant Logical Disk sensor monitors a logical disk in an HPE server via SNMP. This sensor type shows logical disk status and completion percentage.

HPE ProLiant Logical Disk sensor

The SNMP HPE ProLiant Memory Controller sensor monitors a memory controller in an HPE server via SNMP. It shows condition and status of each memory controller separately.

HPE ProLiant Memory Controller

The SNMP HPE ProLiant Network Interface sensor monitors a network interface in an HPE server via SNMP. This sensors shows details about bandwidth consumption (In, Out, Total), errors, good and bad frames received and transmitted, and late and excessive collisions.

During sensor creation, the status of each available network interface is shown. If this status is "Link Failure", it is still possible to add a sensor for the respective interface. However, most likely the sensor for this interface does not work correctly. The error message in this case is "No Such Name (SNMP error # 2)".