FreeNAS Computer Monitoring

[rfielder]

The answer to this question is likely that there is a plug-in, or the details appear on the dashboard if you configure it correctly.

Basically - how much hardware monitoring is built into FreeNAS or one of it's plugins? Will I be able to monitor all fans and all temperatures that the motherboard makes visible?

Not an email alert or update. Something one can view in real time.

I have found a couple of other discussions about this, but they don't seem to come to a final result of the sort I am asking about.

I tend to use things like Rainmeter and SpeedFan and others with more detail. Which can be a good thing, since right now Speed Fan is showing that some of the temps on my current server of way out of wack. Knowing this in real time is a good thing.

Thanks!

 

[garm]

You have this https://www.ixsystems.com/documentation/freenas/11.2-U5/services.html#netdata

 

[rfielder]

Garm - thanks!

I can't tell from the link above, but I don't see fan speeds or temperatures for drives or motherboard. It seems to be all about loading.

There was one message earlier, in a different discussion, where another FreeNAS user mentioned seeing drive temps, so I assume this can be done.

Digging through the Netdata website for FreeNAS or FreeBSD specifics does not seem to work - you can get icons for each, but can't go any deeper for details.

 

[JaimieV]

Drive temps comes from SMART (and maybe elsewhere too), you can see them on the front page of your UI.
Hardware monitoring of PC-class machines is an absolute nightmare with too many bad/weird mechanisms that need OS drivers to gather the data.
If you're using a server with a BMC (a route I would generally recommend over desktop type chassis) there'll usually be a way for the BMC to supply info to you.

 

[Redcoat]

Netdata has an IPMI plugin - see https://docs.netdata.cloud/collectors/freeipmi.plugin/ for

freeipmi.plugin¶

Netdata has a freeipmi plugin.

FreeIPMI provides in-band and out-of-band IPMI software based on the IPMI v1.5/2.0 specification. The IPMI specification defines a set of interfaces for platform management and is implemented by a number vendors for system management. The features of IPMI that most users will be interested in are sensor monitoring, system event monitoring, power control, and serial-over-LAN (SOL).​

Compile freeipmi.plugin¶

1. install libipmimonitoring-dev or libipmimonitoring-devel (freeipmi-devel on RHEL based OS) using the package manager of your system.
   1. re-install netdata from source. The installer will detect that the required libraries are now available and will also build freeipmi.plugin.

Keep in mind IPMI requires root access, so the plugin is setuid to root.


If you just installed the required IPMI tools, please run at least once the command ipmimonitoring and verify it returns sensors information. This command initialises IPMI configuration, so that the netdata plugin will be able to work.

Netdata use¶

The plugin creates (up to) 8 charts, based on the information collected from IPMI:

1. number of sensors by state
   1. number of events in SEL
   2. Temperatures CELCIUS
   3. Temperatures FAHRENHEIT
   4. Voltages
   5. Currents
   6. Power
   7. Fans

It also adds 2 alarms:

1. Sensors in non-nominal state (i.e. warning and critical)
2. SEL is non empty

*** Just make sure that you buy a server MB, not a pro/con-sumer or gaming one, if you want this sort of info ***