Paessler launch sensor to gain better insight into server

The launch of sensors will help organisations monitor system health and virtual disk health. As a result, Paessler’s PRTG can also now take data from the Redfish System Health sensor and provide insights into the overall system status of server equipment and the status of various components such as power supplies or PCIe devices.  

The Redfish Virtual Disk sensor, which monitors the virtual disks of Redfish-capable servers and shows their capacity and status, has also been added to PRTG’s capabilities. Rather than having to search for monitoring data by server make, the Redfish protocol allows you to search right across the server estate. Businesses no longer have to monitor a number of different channels but have information about server health all in one place. 

As a result, monitoring is easy to develop and evolve without the in-depth technical knowledge required with previous APIs. It can also be scaled to meet modern data centre needs. For example, monitoring the move from physical to cloud. It is also easy to implement and as it is model oriented, and it can express the relationships between different components. As such, it is also easy to read by humans – making it a simple process for operating IT infrastructures.  

Redfish relies on a RESTful (Representational State Transfer) programming interface that allows simple queries with numerous programming languages. It transmits data via HTTPS, using JSON as the data format.  The sensors have broad compatibility and can be attached to hardware from the following vendors: 

•  Dell  
•  HPE  
•  Lenovo  
•  Supermicro X10 BMC  
•  IBM  
•  Cisco  

Martin Hodgson - Country Manager, UK and Ireland from Paessler said: “Redfish’s predecessor IPMI had many flaws. One of the biggest being that supported protocols were not human readable which meant it required a significant amount of expertise to develop. With the addition of these sensors, Redfish is now even more use friendly. As a result, businesses can monitor in a way not previously possible. Moving forward Paessler plans to create even more sensors to support the mentoring of server hardware-based on Redfish specifications and ensure that the process is as straight forward as possible for the end user”