Management boards as dedicated hosts

Owned by Matthew Hierholzer
Last updated: Oct 03, 2024

This article details recommendations for monitoring management boards.

APPLICABLE TO CHECKMK BETWEEN VERSION 1.6.0 AND 2.4.0


Table of Contents

Overview

While it is technically possible to attach a management board directly to a host, we recommend not doing that. We recommend monitoring management boards as dedicated hosts.

Background

Consider a typical hardware server. You are monitoring this server through the Checkmk agent, installed in the operating system. Now you realize, that there is a management board on the hardware server. Depending on the vendor, it might be called BMC, ILO, IMM, iDRAC or something entirely different. But this interface provides you with a plethora of information about the state of the hardware, so you obviously want to monitor it.

Solution

Now there are two options:

  • Option 1: Add the IP address and credentials to the Management board section of the existing host.
  • Option 2: Add a dedicated host for the management board and configure it per your needs.


We recommend using the second option for several reasons:

  • The management board is logically completely independent of the installed operating system. Meaning, you can reboot the operating system, without the management board and vice versa. Or in monitoring terms: One of them can be DOWN, while the other is UP.

  • Fine-tuning of a dedicated host is easier and more powerful than the integrated Management board section. For example, if the management board is monitored through SNMP and the device's SNMP stack does not perform well, you might need a higher check interval. Using option 1 would force you to increase the interval for the agent based host as well, although that one might be perfectly performant.

  • The dedicated host can be named in a way, that the relationship to the operating system host is obvious. For example, you can be as elaborate as "mgmt-$MYHOST$" or as brief as "$MYHOST$-c".