SNMP Informant/MBM5 sensors -- update April 26, 2009

[ehall]

I have been working to get different kinds of hardware monitoring working in a consistent manner. This is the package for using SNMP Informant's freeware MBM5 extension with Motherboard Monitor 5.

Here is what the final result looks like for one of my systems, and shows the fan speeds, thermal probe temperatures, and voltage levels for all of the available sensors on that server:



This model uses a script query which uses SNMP to ask the target for all known sensors, and then culls out the sensors of the requested type. Add the appropriate data query to a system that has the SNMP Informant MBM5 extensions, and then create new graphs for each of the sensors that you want. Each selected sensor will be created as an individual data-source and graph, like with interfaces.

The screenie below uses a 3x template for thermal probes, but as you can see in the large image above, the other sensor groups on this host use 3x and 4x graphs.



There are some caveats here. Obviously, you must have SNMP Informant's MBM5 extension and the underlying Motherboard Monitor 5 kit istalled. MBM5 is abandonware and isn't being developed any further, and not all systems can be made to work with it, but it works pretty good on most of my windows systems.

SI identifies sensors according to type but uses a single pool for all of them, and this means that initial queries for available sensors will take some time, and may possibly result in timeouts (subsequent queries for each specific sensor go directly for the named sensor so this is only a problem with initial data queries). Also, if you rename or otherwise shuffle sensors around, you will need to restart the SNMP subsystem on the target, and then refresh the query results.

To use this plugin, perform the following steps:

1. Download cacti-snmp-informant-mbm5.tar.gz to a temporary directory on the Cacti server machine.
   
2. Expand the archive with the command tar -xvzf cacti-snmp-informant-mbm5.tar.gz, and change to the cacti-snmp-informant-mbm5 directory that is created.
   
3. Copy scripts/supermicro_sensors.php to the <cacti>/scripts/ directory.
   
4. If the server is running Cacti 0.8.6, copy the XML files in resource/0.8.6/ to the <cacti>/resource/script_queries/ directory, or if the server is running Cacti 0.8.7, copy the XML files in resource/0.8.7/ to the <cacti>/resource/script_queries/ directory.
   
5. Access the Cacti installation in a web browser, click on the "Import Templates" menu item on the left side of the Console screen, open the templates folder, and import the three data query templates. Cacti should automatically create the required data templates, data input methods, graph templates, and data queries.
   
6. Click on the "Data Queries" menu item on the left side of the Console screen and verify that a "Supermicro - Fan Sensors" data query is present. Click the name of the object and verify that Cacti was able to locate and read the XML resource file. Repeat this process for the Thermal and Voltage data queries.
   
7. Click on the Devices menu item on the left side of the Console screen, select a device with a Supermicro motherboard and is running SuperoDoctor, and scroll down to the "Associated Data Queries" table at the bottom of the screen. Select "Supermicro - Fan Sensors" in the "Add Data Query" drop-down box, and click the "Add" button. Repeat this step for the Thermal and Voltage data queries.
   
8. After the Device screen reloads, verify that the data queries added in step 7 above are present, and then click the "Create Graphs for this Host" link at the top of the page.
   
9. Locate the "Supermicro - Fan Sensors" data query, select the fan devices that you want to monitor, and click the "Create" button at the bottom of the screen to begin monitoring the selected fan sensors. Repeat this process for the Thermal and Voltage data queries. If no sensors are listed, verify that the correct SNMP values for the host have been defined, and that SuperoDoctor is correctly configured on the target device. These issues can be debugged by using the snmpwalk utility on the Cacti server to search for all MIBs under the 1.3.6.1.4.1.10876.2.1.1.1.1 branch on the target devices.

Note that the above process will result in each sensor device having its own graph. If you would like to consolidate multiple sensors of a specific type into a single graph, the plugin includes graph templates that can be used to pull readings from each of the individual data sources simultaneously, although some editing will likely be required. For example, the figure above shows graphs from five fan sensors, two thermal sensors, and five voltage sensors. To use these graph templates, perform the following steps:

1. Access the Cacti installation in a web browser, click on the "Import Templates" menu item on the left side of the Console screen, open the templates folder, and import the three "8x" graph templates. Cacti should automatically create the graph templates.
   
   NOTE: If you encounter the error "(GPRINT Preset) Exact Numbers", you may need to create the GPRINT Preset manually before importing the templates. To do so, click on the Graph Management cacti menu item, and then click on the (new) GPRINT Presets sub-menu underneath. Create a GPRINT Preset with the exact name of "Exact Numbers" and the GPRINT Text value of "%8.0lf". That should allow the graph templates to be imported successfully.
   
2. In some cases, graph items can become disassociated from the data source placeholders when the template is imported. In order to prevent problems that can arise as a result of this issue, verify that the graph templates have been imported successfully. Click on the "Graph Templates" menu item on the left side of the Console screen, open one of the 8x templates that was imported, scroll down to the "Graph Item Inputs" section, and click on the top entry. The screen should reload, with all of the graph items being enumerated, and the top five graph items having their selection boxes enabled (thereby indicating that they are associated with this entry). If the selection boxes for the top five items are not enabled, you must manually enable them and save the changes. Verify that all of the graph items are actively associated with each graph item input entry, where each input will provide a data source for each row of data on the graph.
   
3. If you have exactly eight sensors of a specific type, you do not need to edit the associated graph template. However, if you have less than eight sensors of a specific type, you will need to create a copy of the associated graph template that refers to the exact number of sensors available. Similarly, if you have more than eight sensors of a specfic type, you will need to spread them across two or more consolidated graphs, and would need to create copies of the associated graph template that contain the necessary number of data sources that total the cumulative number of sensors available. To create copies of the graph template(s), click the "Graph Templates" menu item on the left side of the Console screen. For each copy, select the appropriate 8x graph template in the list, choose "Duplicate" in the drop-down list at the bottom of the screen, and then click the "Go" button. You will then need to edit each copy, delete any individual graph items that reference unused data sources, and assign a new name to the graph template.
   
4. Once the appropriate-sized graph templates have been created, click the "Graph Management" menu item on the left side of the Console screen. Once the resulting screen finishes loading, click the "Add" button in the upper right corner to create a new consolidated graph.
   
5. Locate the appropriate graph template from the "Selected Graph Template" drop-down list, then choose the target device from the "Host" drop-down list, and then click the "Create" button to proceed.
   
6. In the resulting screen, you will be presented with a list of the data source entries in the graph template, and given the opportunity to match each data source entry with a data source from the device. Each of the device-specific data sources were created when the individual sensors were selected for monitoring, so each sensor that is currently being monitored has its own discrete data source that can be incorporated into the consolidated graph. Choose the data sources that you would like to incorporate, and then click the "Save" button when finished.
   
7. After the graph has been created, click on the "Graph Management" menu item on the left side of the Console screen, and verify that the graph you have just created is shown in the list. If you would like to use only the consolidated graph, you may also delete the individual sensor-specific graphs from this screen. If you do this, however, do not delete the data sources associated with the individual graphs, as those will still be needed for the consolidated graph.

Note: these files are intended to be used with Cacti 0.8.6 and 0.8.7 and PHP 5.2, and may not operate as expected with other versions.

If there are any additional updates to this, I will replace the attachment below.

Other helpful links:

Motherboard Monitor 5 home page
MBM5 forums
Cansoft's service agent (run MBM5 as a system service)
SNMP Informant MBM5 freeware agent

[BSOD2600]

You realize I did this almost a year ago? http://forums.cacti.net/viewtopic.php?t=7050

[ehall]

I wanted normalized output for MBM5, lmSensors and IPMI devices. There can be more than one I hope.

[jmini]

could you give a instruction how to install and work? thank you.

jmini

[ehall]

The posted update contains a fix that converts the SNMP timeout value from Cacti's millisecond format to PHP/Net-SNMP microsecond format. The lack of conversion in the earlier script would sometimes result in excessive retries or complete failure.

[Lode Runner]

I used this program, but was confused a bit by the results, since they differ from the ones shown by the ASUS PC Probe Utility that came with MotherBoard. MBM5 showed 5-7 degree celcius higher CPU temperature than ASUS PC Probe.

[Martinalix]

i used this program i think its better then as compare to another program i solve my problem Thanks.plz update the information

[ehall]

I updated the plugin to work with 0.8.6 and 0.8.7 SNMP APIs. Since MBM5 has not been updated in several years and is no longer hosted at the last known-good site, this will be the last update for this plugin.