When using Oracle Enterprise Manager and placing all operating systems under the management umbrella of Oracle Enterprise Manager you will already start to get the needed input for a unified and central database where you can look up a lot of the specification of a system. However, Oracle Enterprise Manager is build around the database, management of (Oracle) applications is added at a later stage just like the management of operating systems. For non-Oracle hardware the hardware inspect is also not as deep as one would like sometimes.
However, it can be vital to have a more in depth insight in the hardware that is used in a system. For example if you want to understand how your landscape is build up from an hardware point of view. A Linux tool that might be able to help you with that is lshw which will give you with a single command an overview of the hardware present in your system.
The Oracle YUM repository has the needed packages for lshw which makes the installation of lshw extremely easy as you can use the yum command for the installation as shown below;
yum install lshw
When using lshw in a standard mode you will get a standard user friendly view of the hardware as shown below. Interesting to note, the below is running on an Oracle Linux instance on the Oracle Compute cloud so you will some interesting insights into the inner workings of the Oracle Compute cloud while reading through the below output. When running this on physical hardware the output will look a bit different and more realistic.
[root@testbox09 ~]# lshw
testbox09
description: Computer
product: HVM domU
vendor: Xen
version: 4.3.1OVM
serial: ffc59abb-f496-4819-8d0c-a6fad4334391
width: 64 bits
capabilities: smbios-2.4 dmi-2.4 vsyscall32
configuration: boot=normal uuid=FFC59ABB-F496-4819-8D0C-A6FAD4334391
*-core
description: Motherboard
physical id: 0
*-firmware:0
description: BIOS
vendor: Xen
physical id: 0
version: 4.3.1OVM
date: 11/05/2015
size: 96KiB
capabilities: pci edd
*-cpu:0
description: CPU
product: Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5-2690 v2 @ 3.00GHz
vendor: Intel Corp.
vendor_id: GenuineIntel
physical id: 1
bus info: cpu@0
slot: CPU 1
size: 2993MHz
capacity: 2993MHz
width: 64 bits
capabilities: fpu fpu_exception wp vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx rdtscp x86-64 constant_tsc rep_good nopl eagerfpu pni pclmulqdq ssse3 cx16 pcid sse4_1 sse4_2 x2apic popcnt tsc_deadline_timer aes xsave avx f16c rdrand hypervisor lahf_lm xsaveopt fsgsbase smep erms
*-cpu:1
description: CPU
vendor: Intel
physical id: 2
bus info: cpu@1
slot: CPU 2
size: 2993MHz
capacity: 2993MHz
*-memory:0
description: System Memory
physical id: 3
capacity: 3584MiB
*-bank:0
description: DIMM RAM
physical id: 0
slot: DIMM 0
size: 7680MiB
width: 64 bits
*-bank:1
description: DIMM RAM
physical id: 1
slot: DIMM 0
size: 7680MiB
width: 64 bits
*-firmware:1
description: BIOS
vendor: Xen
physical id: 4
version: 4.3.1OVM
date: 11/05/2015
size: 96KiB
capabilities: pci edd
*-cpu:2
description: CPU
vendor: Intel
physical id: 5
bus info: cpu@2
slot: CPU 1
size: 2993MHz
capacity: 2993MHz
*-cpu:3
description: CPU
vendor: Intel
physical id: 6
bus info: cpu@3
slot: CPU 2
size: 2993MHz
capacity: 2993MHz
*-memory:1
description: System Memory
physical id: 7
capacity: 3584MiB
*-memory:2 UNCLAIMED
physical id: 8
*-memory:3 UNCLAIMED
physical id: 9
*-pci
description: Host bridge
product: 440FX - 82441FX PMC [Natoma]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 100
bus info: pci@0000:00:00.0
version: 02
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
*-isa
description: ISA bridge
product: 82371SB PIIX3 ISA [Natoma/Triton II]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: isa bus_master
configuration: latency=0
*-ide
description: IDE interface
product: 82371SB PIIX3 IDE [Natoma/Triton II]
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1.1
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.1
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: ide bus_master
configuration: driver=ata_piix latency=64
resources: irq:0 ioport:1f0(size=8) ioport:3f6 ioport:170(size=8) ioport:376 ioport:c140(size=16)
*-bridge UNCLAIMED
description: Bridge
product: 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI
vendor: Intel Corporation
physical id: 1.3
bus info: pci@0000:00:01.3
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bridge bus_master
configuration: latency=0
*-display UNCLAIMED
description: VGA compatible controller
product: GD 5446
vendor: Cirrus Logic
physical id: 2
bus info: pci@0000:00:02.0
version: 00
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: vga_controller bus_master
configuration: latency=0
resources: memory:f0000000-f1ffffff memory:f3020000-f3020fff
*-generic
description: Unassigned class
product: Xen Platform Device
vendor: XenSource, Inc.
physical id: 3
bus info: pci@0000:00:03.0
version: 01
width: 32 bits
clock: 33MHz
capabilities: bus_master
configuration: driver=xen-platform-pci latency=0
resources: irq:28 ioport:c000(size=256) memory:f2000000-f2ffffff
*-network
description: Ethernet interface
physical id: 1
logical name: eth0
serial: c6:b0:ed:00:52:16
capabilities: ethernet physical
configuration: broadcast=yes driver=vif ip=10.196.73.178 link=yes multicast=yes
[root@testbox09 ~]#
Even though the above is interesting, it is not helping in building a unified database containing the physical hardware of your servers. However, lshw has some more options that can be used as shown below;
[root@testbox09 ~]# lshw --help
Hardware Lister (lshw) - B.02.17
usage: lshw [-format] [-options ...]
lshw -version
-version print program version (B.02.17)
format can be
-html output hardware tree as HTML
-xml output hardware tree as XML
-short output hardware paths
-businfo output bus information
options can be
-dump OUTFILE save hardware tree to a file
-class CLASS only show a certain class of hardware
-C CLASS same as '-class CLASS'
-c CLASS same as '-class CLASS'
-disable TEST disable a test (like pci, isapnp, cpuid, etc. )
-enable TEST enable a test (like pci, isapnp, cpuid, etc. )
-quiet don't display status
-sanitize sanitize output (remove sensitive information like serial numbers, etc.)
-numeric output numeric IDs (for PCI, USB, etc.)
[root@testbox09 ~]#
The most interesting to note from the above is the xml option. This means you can have the above output in an xml format. We can use the xml format option in a custom check within Oracle Enterprise Manager and instruct the agent deployed on Oracle Linux to use the xml output from lshw as input for Oracle Enterprise Manager and so automatically maintain a hardware configuration management database in Oracle Enterprise Manager without the need to undertake manual actions.
For those who want to check the xml output, you can print it to screen or save it to a file using the below command;
[root@testbox09 ~]# [root@testbox09 ~]# lshw -xml >> /tmp/lshw.xml [root@testbox09 ~]# ls -la /tmp/lshw.xml -rw-r--r-- 1 root root 12151 Oct 31 14:29 /tmp/lshw.xml [root@testbox09 ~]#
