New check_esxi_hardware.py version adds workaround for Dell PE x620

Written by Claudio Kuenzler - 0 comments

Published on October 27th 2012 - Listed in Nagios Hardware VMware Virtualization Monitoring

In the past few weeks I tried to find the reason why users of the Nagios/Monitoring script check_esxi_hardware.py got the following warning on Dell PowerEdge R620 and T620 servers:

WARNING : System Board 1 Riser Config Err 0: Connected - Server: Dell Inc. PowerEdge R620 s/n: xxxxxx System BIOS: 1.2.6 2012-05-10

As I already wrote on September 21st, the CIM element "System Board 1 Riser Config Err 0: Connected" returned a code of 12, which, according to the CIM documentation, means "Not connected". But all affected users had an actual Riser Card connected and working. So this return code does not make sense.

Another fact: All the users affected run either a R620 or T620 server. So maybe this x620 has a bug in its motherboard firmware, who knows (Dell should!).
I asked the users to open a Dell support case, so the Dell engineers investigate the reason - but no useful answer came back from Dell. I also tried to get in touch with Dell over Twitter, which worked actually pretty well and very fast, but after a few e-mails back and forth, Dell didn't write me back anymore.

I don't like workarounds... but in this case it seems the only solution. That's why the new version, today's 20121027, ignores the mentioned CIM element. It is not necessary to use the -i parameter to manually ignore it.

Another minor change was added to the first few lines of the plugin: The web-link to VMware's CIM API for ESXi 5.x was added.

Thanks to every user who contacted me with this error. Thank you for your patience, your help and your testing of the new version. You know who you are.

Update January 3rd 2013:
I finally got Dell's confirmation, that the bug has been acknowledged and that a fix will be created soon. Thanks Dell.

Add a comment

Comments (newest first)

No comments yet.