Fast ILO Exporter

A basic prometheus exporter for HP servers with an ILO controller which uses SNMP (and optionally HTTPS) to attempt to strike a balance between frequency and detail of metrics.

testing

I have tested this on a single server (my dl380p gen8) with ILO4, as I do not own any other servers with an ILO controller.

It works for me, but might not for you.

Setting up the ILO

HP does not allow reading SNMP by default, so you need to enable it.

SNMP

1. Log into your ILO dashboard.
2. Go to Administration > Management
3. Under SNMP Settings set the Read community to whatever you want (but remember it for later!)
4. Click Apply

HTTPS (optional)

1. Log into your ILO dashboard.
2. Go to Administration > User Administration
3. Add a new user
   • Set the username and password to whatever you want (also remember this)
   • I recommend not selecting any permissions, as they are not necessary

Setting up the exporter

These steps are copied from my notes and detail the general process I go through to install any exporter. They were written to run on Debian 12.

download

Grab the latest release from the releases tab. Replace $DOWNLOAD_URL with the appropriate download url.

cd ~
curl $DOWNLOAD_URL -Lo ilo_exporter.tar.gz

# extract
tar -xvf ilo_exporter.tar.gz
rm ilo_exporter.tar.gz

install

create a daemon user and prepare the file structure

# daemon user
sudo adduser --system --group --shell /bin/false --home /opt/ilo_exporter iloexporter

# move
sudo mv ilo_exporter /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter

# permissions
sudo chown -R root:root /opt/ilo_exporter
sudo chmod 0755 /opt/ilo_exporter

# venv
sudo apt install python3-venv
sudo python3 -m venv /opt/ilo_exporter/venv
source /opt/ilo_exporter/venv/bin/activate
sudo pip install prometheus_client pysnmp requests

if using python >= 3.12:

asyncore, a dependency of pysnmp, was removed in python 3.12.

sudo pip install pyasyncore

if also using HTTPS:

sudo touch /opt/ilo_exporter/ilo_credentials
sudo chmod 0750 /opt/ilo_exporter/ilo_credentials

# replace 'vim' with your editor of choice
sudo vim /opt/ilo_exporter/ilo_credentials

Add these contents, making sure to replace $USERNAME and $PASSWORD with the credentials you picked in step 3 of HTTPS server setup

ILO_USERNAME="$USERNAME"
ILO_PASSWORD="$PASSWORD"
# uncomment and point to an SSL certificate if you have one
#ILO_CERTIFICATE="/path/to/ssl/certificate.pem"

test

make sure it works

python /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter/main.py --help

python /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter/main.py -i $ILO_ADDRESS -c $SNMP_COMMUNITY -v

systemd service

Make sure to replace

• $ILO_ADDRESS with your ILO controller address, and
• $ILO_COMMUNITY with the community you picked in step 3 of SNMP server setup

cat << 'EOF' | sudo tee /etc/systemd/system/ilo-exporter.service
[Unit]
Description=A fast(er) prometheus exporter for applicable HP servers using SNMP via the ILO controller.
After=network-online.target

[Service]
User=iloexporter
# uncomment if using HTTPS
#EnvironmentFile=/opt/ilo_exporter/ilo_credentials
WorkingDirectory=/opt/ilo_exporter/exporter
# add --https-fans and/or --https-temperature to this to use HTTPS
ExecStart=/opt/ilo_exporter/venv/bin/python -u /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter/main.py -i $ILO_ADDRESS -c $ILO_COMMUNITY
Restart=on-failure
KillMode=process

# security
PrivateTmp=true
ProtectHome=true
ProtectSystem=strict
PrivateDevices=true
NoNewPrivileges=true
CapabilityBoundingSet=~CAP_SYS_ADMIN

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target
EOF

sudo systemctl daemon-reload

# enable
sudo systemctl enable --now ilo-exporter

# check status
sudo systemctl status ilo-exporter

# test
curl localhost:6969

# monitor logs
sudo journalctl -xefu ilo-exporter

updating

Grab the latest release from the releases tab. Replace $DOWNLOAD_URL with the appropriate download url.

cd ~
curl $DOWNLOAD_URL -Lo ilo_exporter.tar.gz

# extract
tar -xvf ilo_exporter.tar.gz
rm ilo_exporter.tar.gz

# replace old version
sudo rm -rf /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter
sudo mv ilo_exporter /opt/ilo_exporter/exporter

# restart exporter
sudo systemctl restart ilo-exporter

# check status
sudo systemctl status ilo-exporter

Prometheus configuration

nothing too special

  - job_name: some-ilo
    static_configs:
      - targets: ['your-ilo-exporter:6969']