DNS and Asset Information

Saw this post at TaoSecurity today about using DNS as a tool for Asset Management.

http://taosecurity.blogspot.com/2009/02/asset-management-assistance-via-custom.html

It toys with the thought of creating custom DNS records that identify asset owners. It's an interesting thought that was partially used at my last job. Our senior sysadmin had an unwritten policy that any server added to our internal DNS would also need a TXT record that contained information such as the hardware serial number. I'm not sure how many characters a TXT record supports, but I'm sure you could add other info as well. If you weren't sure who the contact person for a server was, or where it was located, you could "dig servername txt".

Here's an example of a DNS TXT record entry.

http://www.zytrax.com/books/dns/ch8/txt.html

Red Hat Satellite 5.2 released

In an earlier post, I mentioned I was unable to fit Red Hat Satellite or Fedora Spacewalk into our infrastructure. The previous version of Red Hat Satellite required Oracle 9i (we run 10g), and Spacewalk requires a derivative of RHEL/CentOS 5 (our standard is version 4). I saw this release today by Red Hat announcing Satellite version 5.2. It now supports Oracle 10g, and still runs on RHEL4 or RHEL5. Too bad everyone is hurting now and pulling the purse strings on their budgets. It would be tough for me to ask for a RHEL AS4 and a Satellite 5.2 license now.

I wonder how hard it would be to backport Spacewalk to RHEL4?

Dell Server OMSA Reporting

I used to think that Dell OpenManage Server Administrator (OMSA) was worthless. I was wrong. I apologize.

I've found for me it's the best way to do actual hardware monitoring. Although there are probably "Official Dell Best Practices" on using and implementing OMSA, I've just gone and installed it and then accessed the machine via my web browser (https://hostname:1311). However, today I found you can actually get some good stuff via the command line using "omreport". Dell's command line documentation for it is located at

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/svradmin/5.2/en/cli/html/report.htm#wp1068065

For instance, I can find out really quick what the status is of my hardware, except for disk/storage related hardware.

# /opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omreport chassis
Health

Main System Chassis

SEVERITY : COMPONENT
Ok : Fans
Ok : Intrusion
Ok : Memory
Ok : Power Supplies
Ok : Processors
Ok : Temperatures
Ok : Voltages
Ok : Hardware Log

Also, someone wrote a nagios plugin that executes this as well.

http://www.nagiosexchange.org/DELL_Server.61.0.html?&tx_netnagext_pi1%5Bp_view%5D=432

To check storage related, you can run the following command.

# /opt/dell/srvadmin/oma/bin/omreport storage pdisk controller=0
List of Physical Disks on Controller PERC 4e/Di (Embedded)

Controller PERC 4e/Di (Embedded)
ID : 0:0
Status : Ok
Name : Physical Disk 0:0
State : Online
Failure Predicted : No
Progress : Not Applicable
Type : SCSI
Capacity : 68.24 GB (73274490880 bytes)
Used RAID Disk Space : 68.24 GB (73274490880 bytes)
Available RAID Disk Space : 0.00 GB (0 bytes)
Hot Spare : No
Vendor ID : FUJITSU
Product ID : MAW3073NC
Revision : 5803
Serial No. : DAL3P6200PR8
Negotiated Speed : 320
Capable Speed : 320
Manufacture Day : Not Available
Manufacture Week : Not Available
Manufacture Year : Not Available
SAS Address : Not Available

ID : 0:1
Status : Ok
Name : Physical Disk 0:1
State : Online
Failure Predicted : No
Progress : Not Applicable
Type : SCSI
Capacity : 68.24 GB (73274490880 bytes)
Used RAID Disk Space : 68.24 GB (73274490880 bytes)
Available RAID Disk Space : 0.00 GB (0 bytes)
Hot Spare : No
Vendor ID : FUJITSU
Product ID : MAW3073NC
Revision : 5803
Serial No. : DAL3P6200PK3
Negotiated Speed : Not Available
Capable Speed : Not Available
Manufacture Day : Not Available
Manufacture Week : Not Available
Manufacture Year : Not Available
SAS Address : Not Available

My Controller ID is 0. This can be found by running "omreport storage controller". Storage commands can be found on

http://support.dell.com/support/edocs/software/svradmin/5.2/en/cli/html/storage.htm#wp1082304