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[Feature] BMC / Redfish / IPMI Hardware Inventory and Health Monitoring #609

Description

@brngates98

Feature Request: BMC / Redfish / IPMI Hardware Inventory and Health Monitoring

Summary

It would be extremely useful if PegaProx could collect and display
hardware-level information from Proxmox/XCP-ng hosts through their BMC
interfaces, such as Dell iDRAC, HPE iLO, Lenovo XCC, Supermicro BMC, and
generic Redfish/IPMI-compatible controllers.

PegaProx already provides strong cluster, VM, monitoring, automation,
alerting, and compliance functionality. Adding BMC-level visibility
would make it much more useful as a true infrastructure operations
dashboard, especially for environments running multiple physical
clusters.


Proposed Functionality

Add a hardware/BMC integration layer that can be mapped to individual
hypervisor nodes.

Initial read-only capabilities could include:

  • Server manufacturer and model
  • Serial number / Service Tag
  • BIOS version
  • BMC/iDRAC/iLO firmware version
  • CPU and memory inventory
  • Storage controller inventory
  • Physical disk health
  • PSU status
  • Fan status
  • Temperature sensors
  • Chassis intrusion status
  • Overall system health
  • Hardware Event Log / SEL / Lifecycle Log
  • Current power draw (where supported)

Suggested Providers

Support a modular provider model:

  • Generic Redfish
  • Generic IPMI
  • Dell iDRAC
  • HPE iLO
  • Lenovo XCC
  • Supermicro BMC

A generic Redfish provider would provide the broadest compatibility,
while vendor-specific providers could expose advanced functionality.


Dashboard Ideas

Per-node information:

  • Hardware Health (Healthy / Warning / Critical)
  • BMC Reachability
  • BIOS Version
  • BMC Firmware Version
  • Service Tag / Serial Number
  • Power State
  • Sensor Warnings
  • Recent Hardware Events

Cluster-wide overview:

  • Nodes with degraded hardware
  • Nodes with failing disks
  • Nodes with PSU failures
  • Nodes with fan failures
  • Nodes with outdated firmware
  • Nodes with unreachable BMCs

Alerting Integration

Integrate hardware events into the existing alerting pipeline.

Example alerts:

  • PSU failure detected
  • Fan failure detected
  • Disk predictive failure
  • Temperature threshold exceeded
  • BMC unreachable
  • Firmware below configured baseline
  • Chassis health changed from OK to Warning or Critical

Optional Phase 2: Host Tooling

While the first implementation should remain agentless using
Redfish/IPMI, a later phase could optionally orchestrate host tooling
installation where appropriate.

Examples:

  • Install ipmitool
  • Install Dell RACADM/OpenManage tools
  • Validate required packages
  • Execute vendor hardware inventory commands
  • Report missing tooling

Keeping this optional avoids unnecessary modifications to Proxmox hosts
while still providing advanced capabilities for administrators who want
them.


Future Enhancements

Potential future capabilities include:

  • Firmware update orchestration
  • BIOS configuration management
  • RAID configuration visibility
  • Power capping
  • Remote power controls
  • Virtual media mounting
  • Remote console launch
  • Hardware inventory export
  • Warranty lookup (vendor permitting)
  • Automatic hardware discovery
  • Integration with maintenance mode before firmware updates

Why This Matters

Today, administrators often need to switch between:

  • Proxmox
  • iDRAC/iLO/XCC web interfaces
  • Vendor utilities
  • Monitoring platforms
  • Documentation or spreadsheets

To answer questions such as:

  • Which node has a failing PSU?
  • Which host has outdated firmware?
  • Which physical disks are failing?
  • What is the Service Tag for this Proxmox node?
  • Why did this host unexpectedly reboot?

Bringing this information into PegaProx would make it a significantly
more complete infrastructure management platform while remaining
vendor-neutral through Redfish.

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