Dell EMC Isilon Monitoring

Last updated on 30 September, 2024

Dell EMC Isilon systems provide instrumentation via SNMP. As such, LogicMonitor Auto-Properties subsystem automatically discovers these devices and adds Isilon to the system.categories device property.

An exception is that in Isilon clusters we’re not able to automatically discover the master node. In this case you’ll need to add IsilonMaster to that device’s system.categories property.

These are the steps to monitor an Isilon cluster:

  • configure SNMP on the cluster
  • add each node to LogicMonitor
  • add a cluster address, and configure it with the IsilonMaster category. (IMPORTANT!!)

Each item is broken down into further details, below.

Configure SNMP Monitoring

The following is extracted from the OneFS User Guide. From within the Isilon management interface:

  1. On the Cluster menu, point to Cluster Settings, and then click SNMP Monitoring. The SNMP Monitoring page appears.
  2. In the Service area, enable SNMP monitoring as needed. The default setting is SNMP is enabled.
    1. To enable SNMP monitoring, select Enable. The SNMP process is enabled for the entire cluster.
  3. In the Settings area, under General Settings, configure settings as needed.
    1. To enable or disable the version or versions of the SNMP protocol to which the nodes respond, next to Protocol access, select a protocol choice from the list of three options. SNMP v3 access is enabled or disabled independently of v1 and v2c.
      • Allow access via SNMP v1 and SNMP v2c only
      • Allow access via SNMP v3 only
      • Allow access via SNMP v1, SNMP v2c and SNMP v3
    2. In the System location box, type the system location name.
This setting is the value that the node reports when responding to queries for the OID SNMPv2-MIb::sysLocation.0. Type any name that helps to identify the location of the node.
  4. In the Settings area, configure protocol settings as needed.
    • In the Settings area, under SNMP v1/v2c Settings , type the name of the community to which you are granting read-only rights. The default setting is public.Note: You must enable v1/v2c protocols in the General Settings section to ensure that the settings are active.
    • In the Settings area, under SNMP v3 Settings, choose a user with read-only permissions and choose an SNMP v3 password.To change the name of the user with read-only permissions, in the Read-only user box, type the SNMP v3 security name. Do not include any space characters in the Read-only user setting. The default read-only user is “general.”If you want to set a new SNMP v3 authentication password, in the SNMP v3 password box, type the new password for the read-only user. The password must contain at least eight characters, and must not contain any space characters. The default password is “password.”
In the Confirm password box, retype the SNMP v3 authentication password.
Note: You must enable v3 protocols in the General Settings section to ensure that the settings are active.
  5. Click Submit.

Add Each Node to LogicMonitor

Isilon (and LogicMonitor) recommends that you configure your network monitoring system (LogicMonitor) to query each node directly. This approach ensures that all nodes have external IP addresses and can respond to SNMP queries (and file requests). It also ensures that LogicMonitor can monitor and alert on data for each node (such as temperature sensors and hardware status), that may not be apparent if only a cluster address is monitored.

Add each node to LogicMonitor using an external IP address. So long as SNMP is enabled on the Isilon cluster, and the appropriate community string has been entered into LogicMonitor, no further action is required to monitor the individual nodes. Ideally, these IP addresses will be fixed to a specific node.

Add a Cluster Address to LogicMonitor (IMPORTANT)

The final step is to add a cluster address to LogicMonitor. This address will be used to monitor cluster wide issues (Cluster CPU load; cluster wide IFS space usage, etc.)  Because LogicMonitor cannot distinguish which Isilon node address should be used for cluster data collection, it is necessary to set the property “IsilonMaster” on this device.

(Cluster data is only collected from this single device, rather than all cluster nodes, to avoid getting an alert about cluster-wide issues from every single node in the cluster. Instead, only a single alert is generated.)

Add the cluster address as a device to LogicMonitor, but be sure to edit the property System.Categories property for this device to include the string IsilonMaster

This will trigger the association of cluster wide datasources with that device.

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