At my work there are several machines running with zfs file systems. Some of them also use zfs pools, which can define a raid out of a system without raid controller (a bit like mdraid simply explained - please don't hit me Solaris guys!). To be able to monitor the status of such zfs pools, there are many Nagios plugins around. Alone on exchange.nagios.org I found seven plugins which check zfs file systems and/or pools. But which one should I take, given that we run different operating systems with zfs?
To answer this question I compared all seven plugins if they work, how they're working and what they can do on the following operating systems on physical machines:
- Solaris 10
- OpenSolaris 11
- SmartOS 2012Q2
- FreeBSD 8.3
The following plugins were compared:
Plugins output (examples):
1. check_zfs.pl on a Solaris 10:
# Check all pools
./check_zfs.pl -p
OK: ZFS on solaris-server - No zfs failures detected
# Check single pool:
./check_zfs.pl -p -z rpool
OK: ZFS on solaris-server - No zfs failures detected
2. check_zfs on an OpenSolaris 11:
# Check with verbose level 2
./check_zfs.pl datapool1 2
OK ZPOOL datapool1 : ONLINE {Size:13.6T Used:13.2T Avail:449G Cap:96%}
# Check with verbose level 3 (shows all disks)
./check_zfs.pl datapool1 3
OK ZPOOL datapool1 : ONLINE {Size:13.6T Used:13.2T Avail:449G Cap:96%}
3. check_zpools on FreeBSD 8.3 and on OpenSolaris 11:
# FreeBSD 8.3:
./check_zpools
OK:datapool:23%:ONLINE OK:dbpool:4%:ONLINE
# OpenSolaris 11:
./check_zpools
WARNING:datapool1:96%:ONLINE OK:rpool:25%:ONLINE
4. check_zpools on Solaris 10:
./check_zpools
OK:rpool:5%:ONLINE
5. check_zpool_fs on Solaris 10 and OpenSolaris 11:
# Solaris 10
./check_zpool_fs rpool 90 95
/rpool: 5%used - (Used: 8.12G/Total: 136G) (90%): OK
# OpenSolaris 11
./check_zpool_fs datapool1 90 95
/datapool1: 96%used - (Used: 13.2T/Total: 13.6T) (95%): CRITICAL
6. check_zpool.pl on FreeBSD 8.3:
./check_zpool.pl
Can't locate Nagios/Plugin.pm in @INC (@INC contains: ....
7. check_zpool.sh on FreeBSD 8.3, SmartOS and Solaris 10:
#FREEBSD
./check_zpool.sh
/ datapool: online / dbpool: online
# SMARTOS
./check_zpool.sh
/ zones: online
# SOLARIS 10
./check_zpool.sh
sed: illegal option -- E
Bad string
/ rpool: unknown state
Comparison table:
| Plugin | Help | Verbose | Solaris10
|
OpenSolaris11 | SmartOS
|
FreeBSD 8.3
|
Active? |
| 1 | y | y | y | y | n (*4) | n (*6)
|
n |
| 2 | y (*1)
|
y | y | y | n (*4) | y (*7)
|
n |
| 3 | n | n | y | y | y | y (*8)
|
? |
| 4 | n | n | y | y | y | y (*8) | n |
| 5 | y (*1) | n | y | y | n (*5)
|
n (*5) | ? |
| 6 | y | y | n (*2)
|
n (*2) | n (*4) | n (*2) | ? |
| 7 | n | n | n (*3)
|
n (*3) | y | y | ? |
| 8+
|
y
|
n
|
y
|
y
|
y
|
y
|
y
|
Legend:
Plugin: The plugin number tested (see above for list)
Help: Is there a help function of the plugin available? (--help, or -h, etc)
Verbose: Is there a verbose function for additional information?
Solaris10: Does the plugin work on Solaris 10?
OpenSolaris11: Does the plugin work on Open Solaris 11?
SmartOS: Does the plugin work on SmartOS (2012Q2)?
FreeBSD 8.3: Does the plugin work on FreeBSD 8.3?
Active: Is this plugin in active development?
*1: No real help available but shows usage as help
*2: Additional perl modules are required
*3: sed -E is used, which is not recognized by the sed installed on the OS
*4: Perl is required
*5: Invalid option error
*6: Plugin outputs that it only works on Solaris 10 when launched on FreeBSD
*7: Works, but always returns CRITICAL output
*8: Works after paths of commands were adapted to FreeBSD
8+: As requested in the comments, I added my own check_zpools plugin.
Additional comments:
Plugin 2) I really like the output of this plugin! A real bummer that it doesn't work on SmartOS due to perl usage :-(
Plugin 3+4) This is actually very much the same plugin, 3) is a fork of 4) with some minor changes
Plguin 6) requires additional perl modules to work (Nagios::Plugin and Switch at least)
I am aware that the "n" could easily become a "y" when perl is installed, but my requirement for the plugin is that it works out of the box, without having to install anything.
Unfortunately, a physical SmartOS doesn't come with a lot of software, so minimum compatibility is important in my case.
And the lovely winner is...:
If I could choose, I'd prefer candidate 2's output mixed with the compatibility of candidate 4 (because its a shell script).
So at the end I decided for plugin 3 (Check Solaris ZFS Pools) but I'll have to adapt the source code anyway so it also works on FreeBSD systems.
I hope this comparison was helpful to you.
Update May 9th 2013: As mentioned, I decided for check_zpools. But for compatibility reasons (SmartOS, FreeBSD, Solaris) I made a lot of changes. Take a look at the next article "Presenting check_zpools - a Nagios plugin to monitor zfs pools".
ck from Switzerland wrote on Apr 29th, 2022:
Sparky, yes, I am actually using check_zpools in Icinga - however via NRPE. But there are not many commands, so a Command object definition in Icinga 2 is very easy to do. See check_zpools monitoring plugin for more information.
Sparky from wrote on Apr 29th, 2022:
First of all, thank you very much for the script!
Second, did you happen to use this with Icinga too? If so do you have any example configuration files for it?
ck from St. Gallen, Switzerland wrote on Aug 12th, 2015:
Hi Logan. Good idea. I added my own check_zpools into the comparison table.
Logan M from US wrote on Aug 12th, 2015:
Hey nice plugin you have here, would it be possible to update to get the results of zpool status? I have started using the script outlined here to monitor zpool status which seems to work but would be good to have all ZFS checks in one nice neat package no ? :)
https://www.rootusers.com/nagios-check-zfs-zpool-status-for-read-write-cksum-errors/
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