I've recently taken over server administration duties and need advice on monitoring the hardware in a Dell server running RHEL 8. I'm comfortable with Linux and general hardware, but I'm less familiar with enterprise server management. The machine has a RAID array on separate storage drives. I only have SSH access, although physical access is possible if absolutely necessary.
I'm considering installing smartmontools for disk SMART data, dmidecode for BIOS and memory information, and ipmitool for power-supply and fan sensors. The system already has lm_sensors, top/htop, and ethtool available. I'm mainly interested in hardware health and failure alerts rather than operating-system update management. Is there anything important I'm missing, and is there a better Dell-specific approach?
4 Answers
Your list covers useful OS-level checks, but it won’t fully describe a hardware RAID setup. Make sure you monitor the RAID controller, physical disk state, virtual-disk state, degraded arrays, rebuilds, and predictive failures. iDRAC or OpenManage can expose those details, while smartmontools may not see the individual disks correctly through the RAID controller.
A practical setup is to use iDRAC for hardware alerts and a normal monitoring agent for the operating system. Keep ethtool for interface errors, monitor filesystem capacity and RAID mount points, and add checks for kernel hardware errors, logged-in services, and backup status. SNMP traps or polling from iDRAC will save you from having to write and maintain lots of custom sensor checks.
The Dell-specific answer is to use iDRAC. It monitors the server’s power supplies, fans, temperatures, memory, disks, RAID controller, and other components independently of the operating system. You can poll it over SNMP from an existing monitoring system, and it can also send alerts directly. That’s generally more reliable than relying only on tools running inside RHEL, especially if the OS is unavailable.
If you’re managing one or more Dell systems, install Dell OpenManage Server Administrator where appropriate. Its command-line tools, such as omreport and omconfig, can show detailed health information and configuration from the operating system. For centralized monitoring, OpenManage Enterprise or any SNMP-capable monitoring platform can collect data from iDRAC instead.
That sounds ideal since I only have SSH access. I’ll check whether iDRAC is enabled and whether the server has the necessary management features configured.