Let’s talk about sensors! Monitoring with PRTG Redfish sensors.

Written by Michael Becker | Mar 4, 2022

In 2021 we introduced 3 Redfish sensors: the Redfish Power Supply sensor, the Redfish System Health sensor, and the Redfish Virtual Disk sensor. Right now, these sensors are in beta state and a part of the experimental features in PRTG.

i The operating methods and the available settings can change at any time.

Do not expect that all functions work properly, or that this sensor works as expected at all. To use these sensors, you must enable beta sensors first:

Open the PRTG web interface and navigate to Setup | System Administration | Monitoring.
Go to section Experimental Features and enable Beta Sensors.
Open the Add Sensor dialog and search for beta. You can now see all available beta sensors.

For more information, see the Knowledge Base:

👉 What are beta sensors and how can I use them?

What is the Redfish standard and which vendors support it?

The Redfish standard was developed in 2014 as a replacement for IPMI. Redfish provides a RESTful interface for server, network, and storage management, for example in industrial IT environments. Many vendors support the Redfish standard. If you want to know if your systems support Redfish, we recommend that you refer to the respective vendor documentation.

i Redfish is a network standard and application programming interface (API) for the management of servers, networks, storage devices, facilities equipment, and other converged infrastructure (CI) components in software-defined hybrid IT environments like web-scale data centers and cloud infrastructure. Read more ...

The following are examples of servers that support Redfish:

Cisco Integrated Management Controller (IMC)
Dell iDRAC BMC
Fujitsu iRMC
HPE iLO BMC
HPE Moonshot BMC
IBM Power Systems BMC
IBM Power Systems Flexible Service Processor (FSP)
Lenovo XClarity Controller (XCC) BMC
Supermicro BMC

👆 Redfish can also be integrated into BMC (IPMI) firmware at a later date and thus can be retrofitted to servers already in use. Let’s have a detailed look at the 3 sensors!

Redfish System Health Sensor (BETA)

This sensor monitors the overall system status and the status of various components of a Redfish-capable server and requires - as do all other Redfish sensors - credentials for Redfish in settings that are higher in the object hierarchy, for example, in the settings of the parent device.

The sensor includes the following channels for monitoring different statuses:

Chassis Status
Downtime
Drives Status
Fans Status
Memory Status
PCIe Devices Status
Power Supplies Status
Processor Status
System Power Status
System Status (default channel)
Thermal Status

👉 PRTG Manual: Redfish System Health sensor

Redfish Virtual Disk sensor (BETA)

The Redfish Virtual Disk sensor monitors the virtual disk of Redfish-capable servers and shows their capacity and status. Use this sensor to ensure that disks are up and running and get notified about any possible problems before they occur.

This sensor includes the following channels:

Capacity of a virtual disk in GB
Downtime
Physical disks in critical status
Physical disks in offline status
Physical disks in OK status
Physical disks in warning status
Status (Up, Warning, Down, Unknown) of the virtual disk

👉 PRTG Manual: Redfish Virtual Disk sensor

Redfish Power Supply Sensor

You can use this sensor to monitor the power supply of a Redfish-capable server. Among other information, it displays the input voltage and can therefore be a good indicator of a power outage. Especially at small company locations, where there is no IT person on site, this sensor can also be used to document evens such as power outages during the night.

The Redfish Power Supply sensor provides the overall power status as well as the following information:

Downtime
Input voltage
Input watts
Output load in percent
Output watts
Power efficiency in percent

👉 PRTG Manual: Redfish Power Supply sensor

What's coming up?

If you are interested in what we are working on or will work on in the future, have a look here:

👉 PRTG roadmap

On this site we are also collecting feedback via surveys to help us develop some new features and we would love to get your opinions. Of course we are also happy about every comment you leave us under this article!

View full post