Monitoring Temperatures with Cacti - Monitoring Windows Systems
(Page 2 of 4 )
On the previous page we already described our approach in a nutshell. This means by now you should have a clear picture of how we’ll accomplish our goals. So let’s begin with downloading the latest SpeedFan version and installing it onto our server(s) or system(s) which we’re planning to monitor. You can download SpeedFan from here.
Working your way around its installation and possibly configuring it afterward won’t be a problem at all, so let’s move further. We want to make sure SpeedFan is always running on the necessary systems. So we can either make it run as a service, or put it into your startup applications, or anything similar. You should check out the Microsoft guide on How to create a Windows service by using Sc.exe. It’s a good read.
All right, so we’ve made sure SpeedFan is always running on our systems. The next step is hooking up the systems with that so-called SpeedFan SNMP Extension. You can download the latest version from this page. At the time of writing it’s 0.1.0, but we’ve had positive experiences with 0.0.4-xx versions as well. So the pre-final v1 version stage shouldn’t discourage anyone. It’s nothing fancy, it does work—and that’s all.
To work properly, of course, your Windows operating systems must have the Microsoft SNMP service installed, enabled, and currently running. Describing how to do this is beyond the scope of this article, but you can read these two guides. This article also requires that you have at least some sort of basic SNMP protocol experience, such as how to retrieve values (e.g.; snmpwalk) and what MIB OIDs are.
Now you can create your own data templates based on data sources in the way that you want. This is where you can customize. In the table below you can find the list of OIDs that you need to use. The values are for temperatures, voltages, and fan speeds (RPMs). As you can see, the final digit is the only value that changes; it starts at 0 and goes up to 12. So if you want to monitor 10 fans, you’ll know their OIDs.
“temp0” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.1.0"
“temp1” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.1.1"
“temp2” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.1.2"
[...]
“temp12” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.1.12"
“volt0” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.3.0"
“volt1” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.3.1"
“volt2” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.3.3"
[...]
“volt12” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.3.12"
“fan0” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.2.0"
“fan1” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.2.1"
“fan2” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.2.2"
[...]
“fan12” => ".1.3.6.1.4.1.16.0.2.12"
Once everything is up and running (SNMP service + SpeedFan + SNMP Extension for SpeedFan), then theoretically you should be able to test by retrieving the values of the above OIDs via the walk command. Try it before fiddling with Cacti. There is still a bit of formatting left to do. The values retrieved are in Celsius and one hundred times larger than the actual number. So you need to divide them by 100 and then convert to Fahrenheit, if need be.
As a final pointer regarding this, if you are struggling with the above, then check out this thread by a moderator on Cacti Forums. In that thread you can find “ready-to-run” templates for Cacti in a ZIP archive. They come with clear instructions and a generic template. You can modify that to fit your needs. This way you don’t need to create all of your templates from scratch. All you need, though, are the OIDs.
Next: Monitoring Linux Systems >>
More Server Administration Articles
More By Barzan 'Tony' Antal
