Brokkr Monitoring - BMC

Brokkr Monitoring - Comprehensive BMC Dashboard

A complete monitoring dashboard for bare metal servers with BMC (Baseboard Management Controller) integration, designed for data centers and infrastructure monitoring.

Overview

This dashboard provides comprehensive monitoring for physical servers including:

• System Status & Power Management - Real-time power consumption, chassis status, and uptime monitoring
• Temperature Monitoring - CPU, inlet, and exhaust temperature sensors with thermal management alerts
• Network Connectivity - BMC ping monitoring, response times, and network interface traffic
• GPU Performance - Complete GPU metrics including power, temperature, utilization, and memory usage
• Hardware Health - IPMI administrator count, power supply events, and system reliability metrics

Data Sources

• Primary: Prometheus/Thanos
• Metrics Source: IPMI sensors, BMC monitoring, GPU telemetry
• Collection: Hardware sensors and system monitoring agents

Key Features

🖥️ System Overview

• System manufacturer detection
• Real-time monitoring status
• Chassis power state (ON/OFF)
• DCMI power consumption readings
• System uptime tracking
• IPMI administrator user count

⚡ Power Management

• Real-time system power consumption (DCMI)
• GPU power consumption (total and per-GPU)
• Power supply events monitoring
• Power cycle frequency tracking
• Smart power thresholds and alerts

🌡️ Thermal Management

• CPU temperature monitoring
• Inlet temperature (ambient air)
• Exhaust temperature (cooling efficiency)
• Hardware-agnostic temperature sensors
• Thermal threshold alerts

🌐 Network Monitoring

• BMC ping loss percentage for all interfaces
• Network response time monitoring
• Connectivity status (Private/Public/IPMI networks)
• Host/OS network traffic (RX/TX)
• Network error rate monitoring

🎮 GPU Monitoring

• GPU count and system information
• Real-time power usage per GPU
• GPU temperature monitoring
• Core utilization metrics
• Memory usage (used/total)
• Encoder/Decoder utilization
• PCIe utilization (TX/RX)
• NVML and driver version tracking

🖥️ Host/OS Metrics

• CPU utilization percentage
• System load average
• Memory utilization
• Disk usage monitoring

Dashboard Variables

• hostname: Select target server for monitoring
  • Automatically detects available hosts with monitoring data
  • Filters to show only hosts with complete metric coverage

Metric Examples

System power consumption

chassis_power_reading{hostname=~"$hostname"}

Network traffic

sum(rate({name=“interface_.*_bits_received”,hostname="$hostname"}[5m]))/8

GPU utilization

gpu_utilization{hostname=~"$hostname"}

Temperature monitoring

temp_degrees_c{hostname=~"$hostname"}

Alerts & Thresholds

Power

• Green: < 300W
• Yellow: 300-400W
• Orange: 400-500W
• Red: > 500W

Temperature

• Green: 20-40°C
• Yellow: 40-60°C
• Orange: 60-80°C
• Red: > 80°C

Network

• Green: 0% packet loss, <100ms response
• Yellow: 0.1-1% loss, 100-500ms response
• Orange: 1-5% loss, 500-1000ms response
• Red: >5% loss, >1000ms response

Requirements

• Grafana 8.0+
• Prometheus/Thanos data source
• BMC/IPMI enabled servers with monitoring agents
• GPU monitoring (optional - shows “NO GPU DETECTED” if unavailable)

Installation

1. Import the JSON dashboard file into Grafana
2. Configure your Prometheus/Thanos data source
3. Update data source UID to match your environment
4. Set up hostname variable to match your server naming convention
5. Configure refresh rate (default: 5 seconds)

Supported Hardware

• Cross-platform: Dell, HP, Supermicro, and other BMC-enabled servers
• GPUs: NVIDIA GPUs with NVML support
• Networks: Standard ethernet interfaces (eno1, eno2, eno3, etc.)
• IPMI: Standard IPMI 2.0 compatible BMCs

Use Cases

• Data Center Monitoring: Real-time infrastructure health
• GPU Cluster Management: AI/ML workload monitoring
• Thermal Management: Cooling system optimization
• Power Management: Energy consumption tracking
• Network Monitoring: Connectivity and performance tracking
• Hardware Health: Proactive maintenance alerts

Dashboard Sections

1. System Status Overview - At-a-glance system health
2. Power Supply & System Power - Energy consumption monitoring
3. Temperature Monitoring - Thermal management
4. Network & Connectivity Metrics - Network performance
5. GPU Information & Performance - Complete GPU telemetry
6. Host/OS System Metrics - Operating system metrics

Configuration Notes

• Auto-refresh: Set to 5 seconds for real-time monitoring
• Time Range: Default last 5 minutes (adjustable)
• Variables: Hostname selection auto-populates from available metrics
• Thresholds: Pre-configured for typical data center environments
• Colors: Green/Yellow/Orange/Red system for quick health assessment