Special features of the hardware appliance

The Checkmk hardware appliance differs from the virtual appliance in a number of points.

Firstly, the racks have a RAID 1 connection and a corresponding additional menu item in the web interface.

Secondly, a separate management interface is available via which the rack can be controlled independently of the regular network connection.

In addition, you can provide the racks with an SMS modem in order to be reliably notified in the event of failures.

We will explain all of these aspects in this article, everything else can be found in the main appliance article.

Your rack has two occupied hard drive bays at the front of the enclosure. These are marked with the numbers 0 and 1 on the rack4 devices. The hard drives installed here are connected together in a RAID 1 array (mirror) so that your data is stored redundantly on both hard drives. Should one of the hard drives fail, the data will still be available on the second hard drive.

The rack is designed for redundancy and remote maintenance — so use both power supplies! And the management interface, to absolutely not need physical access in the future.

The racks also feature an extension with two additional network ports - for further redundancy in cluster operation.

If you are using a rack4+: For the initial setup, you must use one of the copper network ports. You cannot initially obtain an IP address via the additional fiber interfaces; you can only do this via the web interface.

You can view the status of the RAID in your appliance’s web interface. To do this, select the RAID-Setup item in the web interface’s main menu. You can also carry out a repair of the RAID from this screen, should it be necessary.

If a hard disk is detected as being defective, it is displayed in the web interface as Degraded. On the unit itself, depending on the type, the error will be indicated by a blue flashing LED lamp on the hard drive bay.

By pressing the small lever on the left side of the slide-in module, the assembly is unlocked and you can pull the tray including the hard drive out of the enclosure. Now you can loosen the screws on the bottom of the tray and remove the defective hard drive from the tray. Mount the new hard drive in the tray and push it back into the free slot in the device.

If the unit is switched on while you replace the hard disk, the RAID rebuild process will start automatically. You will be able to see the rebuild’s progress in the web interface.

The fail-safe function will only be restored after the RAID has been completely repaired.

If the unit detects that both hard disks are defective or have been removed, a restart will be triggered automatically.

Your rack has a built-in management interface (Dell iDrac). You can use this management interface’s web interface to, for example, control the unit if it is not switched on or is no longer accessible, and to remotely control the local console.

If you want to use the management interface, you must first connect the dedicated IPMI LAN port to your network.

Caution: For security reasons, we recommend connecting the IPMI-LAN to a dedicated management network, if possible.

The management interface is supplied in a deactivated state. You can activate and configure it via the Management Interface option in the device settings.

Here you must assign a separate IP address for the management interface and define dedicated access data for access.

After you have saved these settings, you can open the management interface’s IP address with your web browser and there log in with the access data you have just defined.

Important: The settings for the management interface are persistent, i.e. they are retained even when you reset to the factory settings. This ensures that you will no longer need physical access to the rack later.