I am trying to use PRTG to determine the BIOS serial numbers of our Dell ESX hosts. Anyone know a simple way to implement that sensor? I usually use a custom WMI sensor for Dell Servers running Windows to get that info but am stumped on how to get that info out of a bare-metal ESX server. Any ideas?

Article Comments

Hi,
when you are able to log in via SSH you might us a SSH Script Sensor to run the command

dmidecode | grep 'Serial Number:'

!!Further parsing of the output is most likely necessary!!
The sensor then can be used to pass back the serial number back to PRTG in the message parameter of the return values.
Best regards


Jun, 2013 - Permalink

Thanks for the idea but I was hoping for something simpler, like a channel in the VMWare hardware sensor. The ESX host is not allowing SSH connections.


Jun, 2013 - Permalink

I will forward your suggestion to the responsible developer but cannot say whether it is possible at all to get the serial number of a ESX server via SOAP request. Additional, SSH can be enabled in the vSphere Client for an ESX host.
Best regards


Jun, 2013 - Permalink

I'll take a look at that SSH article. BTW it is allowing WBEM connections so that would be another option besides SOAP.


Jun, 2013 - Permalink

Thanks, we will look into this as well.


Jun, 2013 - Permalink