IPMI email notifications and security
I just got Debian installed on a new system that has IPMI monitoring
support. I haven't used it before, and it's quite cool! I can ask
for the status of various fans and disks remotely, and also send the
display to a remote computer.
The server is in a colo, so generally nobody is near the console on a
regular basis. What I'd like to do is have the system send an email
when something goes wrong. For example, if a power supply, fan, or
disk fails, the CPU temperature gets too high, etc.
I've looked around the various IPMI commands. There's a lot there,
and it's not obvious to me what the best approach is for doing this.
I was hoping somebody had set up something similar and could help
point me in the right direction. For example, do you use scripts to
run the IPMI commands and send emails when you see keywords, or log
alerts somewhere and scan the logs, or is there something more
straightforward?
Also, I really like the remote access features, but as I mentioned the
machine is in a colo and so there's really not a LAN side that's known
to be trusted. How do other people deal with this? Do you just
connect the admin port to the Internet, and make sure everything is
kept up-to-date and you have strong passwords? Or put the admin ports
behind a VPN? Or just not use these features?
Thanks again for any experience anybody can share with this!
----Scott.
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