IPMI Metrics via Telegraf

This integration allows you to configure a Telegraf agent to send your metrics, in multiple formats, to Logit.io.

Telegraf is a flexible server agent equipped with plug-in support, useful for sending metrics and events from data sources like web servers, APIs, application logs, and cloud services.

To ship your metrics to Logit.io, we will integrate the relevant input and outputs.http plug-in into your Telegraf configuration file.

Choose the install for your operating system below to get started:

Windows

wget https://dl.influxdata.com/telegraf/releases/telegraf-1.19.2_windows_amd64.zip

Download and extract to: C:\Program Files\Logitio\telegraf\

Configuration file: C:\Program Files\Logitio\telegraf\

MacOS

brew install telegraf

Configuration file x86_64 Intel: /usr/local/etc/telegraf.conf Configuration file ARM (Apple Silicon): /opt/homebrew/etc/telegraf.conf

Ubuntu/Debian

wget -q https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
echo '393e8779c89ac8d958f81f942f9ad7fb82a25e133faddaf92e15b16e6ac9ce4c influxdata-archive_compat.key' | sha256sum -c && cat influxdata-archive_compat.key | gpg --dearmor | sudo tee /etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg > /dev/null
echo 'deb [signed-by=/etc/apt/trusted.gpg.d/influxdata-archive_compat.gpg] https://repos.influxdata.com/debian stable main' | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/influxdata.list

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

RedHat and CentOS

cat <<EOF | sudo tee /etc/yum.repos.d/influxdata.repo
[influxdata]
name = InfluxData Repository - Stable
baseurl = https://repos.influxdata.com/stable/\$basearch/main
enabled = 1
gpgcheck = 1
gpgkey = https://repos.influxdata.com/influxdata-archive_compat.key
EOF

sudo yum install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

SLES & openSUSE

zypper ar -f obs://devel:languages:go/ go
zypper in telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

FreeBSD/PC-BSD

sudo pkg install telegraf

Configuration file: /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for Telegraf

The configuration file below is pre-configured to scrape the system metrics from your hosts, add the following code to the configuration file /etc/telegraf/telegraf.conf from the previous step.

# Read metrics from the bare metal servers via IPMI
[[inputs.ipmi_sensor]]
  ## optionally specify the path to the ipmitool executable
  # path = "/usr/bin/ipmitool"
  ##
  ## Setting 'use_sudo' to true will make use of sudo to run ipmitool.
  ## Sudo must be configured to allow the telegraf user to run ipmitool
  ## without a password.
  # use_sudo = false
  ##
  ## optionally force session privilege level. Can be CALLBACK, USER, OPERATOR, ADMINISTRATOR
  # privilege = "ADMINISTRATOR"
  ##
  ## optionally specify one or more servers via a url matching
  ##  [username[:password]@][protocol[(address)]]
  ##  e.g.
  ##    root:passwd@lan(127.0.0.1)
  ##
  ## if no servers are specified, local machine sensor stats will be queried
  ##
  # servers = ["USERID:PASSW0RD@lan(192.168.1.1)"]

  ## Recommended: use metric 'interval' that is a multiple of 'timeout' to avoid
  ## gaps or overlap in pulled data
  interval = "30s"

  ## Timeout for the ipmitool command to complete. Default is 20 seconds.
  timeout = "20s"

  ## Schema Version: (Optional, defaults to version 1)
  metric_version = 2

  ## Optionally provide the hex key for the IMPI connection.
  # hex_key = ""

  ## If ipmitool should use a cache
  ## for me ipmitool runs about 2 to 10 times faster with cache enabled on HP G10 servers (when using ubuntu20.04)
  ## the cache file may not work well for you if some sensors come up late
  # use_cache = false

  ## Path to the ipmitools cache file (defaults to OS temp dir)
  ## The provided path must exist and must be writable
  # cache_path = ""

Read more about how to configure data scraping and configuration options for IPMI

Once you have generated the configuration file, you need to set up the output plug-in to allow Telegraf to transmit your data to Logit.io in Prometheus format. This can be accomplished by incorporating the following code into your configuration file:

[[outputs.http]]
  
  url = "https://<your-metrics-username>:<your-metrics-password>@<your-metrics-stack-id>-vm.logit.io:0/api/v1/write"
  data_format = "prometheusremotewrite"

  [outputs.http.headers]
    Content-Type = "application/x-protobuf"
    Content-Encoding = "snappy"

Windows

telegraf.exe --service start

MacOS

telegraf --config telegraf.conf

Linux

sudo service telegraf start

for systemd installations

systemctl start telegraf

Data should now have been sent to your Stack.

View my data

If you don't see metrics take a look at How to diagnose no data in Stack below for how to diagnose common issues.

If you don't see data appearing in your Stack after following the steps, visit the Help Centre guide for steps to diagnose no data appearing in your Stack or Chat to support now.

To efficiently monitor and analyze IPMI metrics across diverse systems, it's crucial to implement a reliable and effective metrics management solution. Telegraf, an open-source server agent used for collecting and transmitting telemetry data, is exceptionally suitable for this task. It can gather IPMI metrics from a multitude of sources, such as operational servers, hardware monitoring interfaces, and other associated applications.

Telegraf comes with an extensive variety of input plugins, enabling users to collect metrics from different sources, such as CPU usage, memory utilization, temperature readings, fan speeds, and more. All these metrics are important for understanding the health and performance of hardware systems managed through IPMI. To store and analyze these collected metrics, organizations can leverage Prometheus, an open-source monitoring and alerting tool, recognized for its flexible querying language and impressive data visualization capabilities.

To transfer IPMI metrics from Telegraf to Prometheus, organizations need to configure Telegraf to output metrics in the Prometheus format and then set up Prometheus to scrape these metrics from the Telegraf server. This process involves configuring Telegraf to collect IPMI metrics, outputting them in the Prometheus format, setting up Prometheus to retrieve these metrics from the Telegraf server, and then interpreting the data using Prometheus's robust querying and graphical visualization tools.

Upon successful integration of the metrics into Prometheus, further analysis and visualization can be carried out using Grafana. Grafana, a leading open-source platform known for its monitoring and observability capabilities, is fully compatible with Prometheus. It allows users to create dynamic, interactive dashboards for an in-depth exploration of the metrics data, delivering a comprehensive understanding of performance trends and potential hardware issues managed through IPMI.

If you need any further assistance with shipping your log data to Logit.io we're here to help you get started. Feel free to get in contact with our support team by sending us a message via live chat & we'll be happy to assist.