Monitor LSI 3ware raid controller on ESXi

This concerns a server that runs ESXi (v. 4.x or 5.x) installed on drives that are configured into a raid10 using an LSI 3ware 97050 raid controller.

I would like to know if there is a way to monitor the LSI 3ware series of controllers, in particular the 9750, through ESXi. And to hopefully also run the monitoring daemon LSI provides.

I know you can set up a cronjob to execute tw_cli through ssh on the ESXi server. However that's not really ideal.

I am not using vcenter by the way. It would be nice to have more than just monitoring working, since the 3ware software has a very useful web client, besides tw_cli.

vCenter has some pre-built alerts that will catch hardware failure on (most) hardware. This will show up as an alert in the vSphere Client, and can also send out a trap to a listening host.

It looks like the only way to monitor this 3ware raid controller through ESXi is to enable ssh access on the ESXi server, install tw_cli on the datastore (not in places such as /opt because it won't survive a reboot) and set up a daily or weekly cron job to run something like:

ssh esxihost.example.org /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/3ware/tw_cli /c0 show all
ssh esxihost.example.org /vmfs/volumes/datastore1/3ware/tw_cli /c0 show alarms

And have the result emailed to you. Which cron should do automatically. You can enhance it with grep and whatever else works to only email you in case of an alarm. Make sure to copy your ssh key so you don't need to provide your password. You will have to repeat this after the ESXi server reboots.

This has the added benefit you can also manage the raid using the tw_cli tool through an ssh session.

ssh can be enabled on ESXi 5.0 rather easily through the vsphere client:

• http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2011/08/enable-ssh-on-esxi-5-via-vsphere-client/

Or using the console:

• http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2011/08/activate-ssh-on-vmware-esxi-5-0/

To enable ssh on ESXi 4.1 try this:

• http://www.thomasmaurer.ch/2010/07/activated-ssh-on-esxi-4-1/

And on ESXi 4.0 this will enable ssh:

• http://www.run-virtual.com/?p=223

Since for 4.0 it's a little bit more hassle I laid out the basic upshot:

• at the console hit alt F1
• type: unsupported
• enter password
• vi /etc/inetd.conf
• comment in the line(s) with ssh
• kill inetd
• run inetd (just typing it)