**License: Pro** - Requires a Pro or Enterprise license.

Overview#

The Redfish probe monitors server and storage hardware through the DMTF Redfish API, providing comprehensive health, capacity, and performance metrics. It supports a wide range of hardware platforms including Dell iDRAC, Dell PowerVault ME series, HPE iLO, Lenovo XClarity, and Cisco UCS.

The probe automatically detects the hardware vendor via the Redfish API and adapts its metric collection accordingly. No vendor-specific configuration is required.

Collected Data:

• Controller, drive, pool, and volume health status
• Storage capacity (total, allocated, used, free) for pools and volumes
• I/O performance metrics (reads, writes, latency, throughput)
• Hardware event logs (critical, warning, informational entries)
• Drive failure predictions and hotspare status
• Encryption status for volumes and drives

Supported Hardware:

• Dell iDRAC (PowerEdge servers)
• Dell PowerVault ME series (ME5024, etc.)
• HPE iLO (ProLiant servers)
• Lenovo XClarity (ThinkSystem servers)
• Cisco UCS (Unified Computing System)
• Any hardware implementing the DMTF Redfish standard

Quick Start#

Basic Configuration#

probes:
  - name: "Hardware Server01"
    type: redfish
    params:
      base_url: "https://idrac-server01.company.com"
      username: "monitoring"
      password: "SecurePassword123"
      interval: 300
      tls:
        verify_ssl: false

Important notes:

• base_url: The Redfish API endpoint (iDRAC, iLO, or BMC management address)
• interval: 300 seconds (5 minutes) is recommended for hardware monitoring
• verify_ssl: Set to false for self-signed certificates commonly used on BMC interfaces

Multiple Servers#

Monitor multiple hardware targets with separate probe instances:

probes:
  - name: "Dell Storage ME5024"
    type: redfish
    params:
      base_url: "https://dell-me5024.company.com"
      username: "admin"
      password: "StoragePassword"
      interval: 300
      tls:
        verify_ssl: false

  - name: "HPE ProLiant DL380"
    type: redfish
    params:
      base_url: "https://ilo-dl380.company.com"
      username: "monitoring"
      password: "ServerPassword"
      interval: 300
      tls:
        verify_ssl: false

Metrics Collected#

Health Metrics#

Monitor the health status of hardware components. Health values use a standard scale: 0=OK, 1=Warning, 2=Critical, 3=Unknown.

Storage Controllers#

Drives#

Storage Pools#

Volumes#

Events and Logs#

Capacity Metrics#

Storage Pools#

Volumes#

Drives#

Performance Metrics#

Volume I/O#

Pool I/O#

Operations Metrics#

Tags#

All metrics include contextual tags for filtering and grouping.

Controller Tags#

Drive Tags#

Pool Tags#

Volume Tags#

Event and Log Tags#

Recommended Alerting#

Essential Health Alerts#

• Monitor hardware.storage.controller.health for controller failures
• Monitor hardware.storage.redundancy.health for redundancy issues
• Monitor hardware.storage.drive.failure_predicted for drives with predicted failures
• Monitor hardware.storage.drive.has_operations for ongoing maintenance operations
• Monitor hardware.logs.entries.critical for critical system events

Capacity Alerts#

• Monitor hardware.storage.pool.capacity.free_percent for available space
• Monitor hardware.storage.volume.capacity.used_percent for volume utilization

Performance Alerts#

• Monitor hardware.storage.volume.io.total_ops for general I/O activity
• Monitor hardware.storage.volume.io.read.latency and hardware.storage.volume.io.write.latency for performance issues

Event Monitoring#

• Monitor hardware.logs.entries.critical and hardware.logs.entries.warning for system issues
• Use hardware.logs.entries.last_24h to track recent system activity
• Compare trends between hardware.logs.entries.last_24h and hardware.logs.entries.last_7d to identify event spikes
• Use hardware.eventservice.health to verify the event service is operating correctly

Troubleshooting#

Connection Issues#

Symptom: Cannot connect to the Redfish endpoint

Diagnosis:

1. Verify the BMC/iDRAC/iLO management interface is reachable from the agent host:

   curl -k https://idrac-server01.company.com/redfish/v1/

2. Verify the management interface is powered on and network-connected
3. Check for firewall rules blocking HTTPS (port 443) between the agent and the BMC

TLS/SSL Errors#

Symptom: TLS handshake failures or certificate errors

Resolution: BMC management interfaces typically use self-signed certificates. Set verify_ssl: false in the probe configuration:

params:
  tls:
    verify_ssl: false

If your environment uses properly signed certificates, ensure the CA chain is trusted by the system running the agent.

Authentication Failures#

Symptom: 401 Unauthorized or login failures

Diagnosis:

1. Verify credentials by logging in to the BMC web interface manually
2. Check that the account is not locked out due to failed login attempts
3. Verify the account has sufficient privileges for Redfish API access (read-only access is sufficient)
4. Some BMCs limit concurrent sessions – ensure the session limit is not reached

Dell ME Capacity Shows Zero#

Symptom: Pool or volume capacity metrics return 0

Explanation: Dell PowerVault ME series systems may return CapacityBytes=0 in the standard Redfish response. The agent automatically detects this and uses Capacity.Data.AllocatedBytes as the effective capacity. Ensure you are running a recent version of the agent for this workaround to be active.

Debug Logging#

Enable debug logging for the Redfish probe:

# Runtime log level change
curl -X POST http://localhost:8080/api/{key}/debug/logs \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"module_levels": [{"module": "probe.redfish", "level": "debug"}]}'

# Or start agent with verbose logging
./senhub-agent run --authentication-key KEY --verbose --debug-modules probe.redfish

License Requirements#

The Redfish probe requires a Pro or Enterprise license.