The Checkmk Appliance

Monitoring made simple. Avoid spending time on the installation and maintenance of the IT required to operate your monitoring system with the Checkmk Appliance.

Why choose the Checkmk Appliance

Any environment

Operate Checkmk within your existing virtualization platform or in a dedicated appliance

Quick set-up

Get started immediately. Hardware and software come already preconfigured

Low maintenance

Provision of updates and security patches for OS, software, libraries and tools and Checkmk

Built-in HA

High availability for your hardware appliances using built-in active-passive clustering


Virtual Appliance

Checkmk virt1 is a virtual appliance available in formats that can be read by all common virtualization platforms. Checkmk virt1 is delivered fully pre-installed as an image with operating system and is ready to operate. It can be set up using dialogues and can be configured using its own web UI. You do not require any Linux know-how to do this.

A highlight: Its firmware and operating system are identical to those of the hardware appliances and thus 100% compatible. This allows a simple management of all appliance types also in a mixed environment, for example, across multiple sites.

  checkmk virt1
CPUs1 2-16
Number of Hosts2, 4 1,500
Number of Services2, 4 30,000
Firmware-Volume 4.0 GB
Data-Volume3 4.0 - 100.0 GB
Price4 Starting from €360 per year

Physical Checkmk appliance

Physical Appliance

Our physical appliance comes as a ready-to-use device and is operational after only a few minutes. A web UI is available to configure the operating system. The innovative storage concept of the appliance enables a quick hardware replacement. All settings, user data, and installed Checkmk versions are stored in the external storage (RAID 1 or SD card) and can thus be easily transferred from one appliance to another. This enables easy hardware maintenance without the requirement to have a Linux expert on site.

Physical appliance device types

The checkmk rack1 and checkmk rack4 series are designed for use in data centers.

Checkmk rack1
model 2023
Available in Europe
Checkmk rack4
model 2023
Available in Europe
Checkmk rack4+
model 2023
Available in Europe
Manufacturer Dell Dell Dell
Chassis 19" rack mountable 19" rack mountable 19" rack mountable
Number of Hosts4, 5 2,500 10,000 12,500
Number of Services4, 5 50,000 400,000 500,000
CPU Intel® Xeon® E2236G @ 3.4 GHz
Cores: 6  | Threads: 12
12M cache, turbo
2x
Intel® Xeon® Silver 4310 @ 2.1 GHz
Cores: 12  | Threads: 24
10.4GT/s, 18M Cache, Turbo
2x
Intel® Xeon® Silver 4310 @ 2.1 GHz
Cores: 12  | Threads: 24
10.4GT/s, 18M Cache, Turbo
Memory 2x 8 GB UDIMM
3,200 MT/s | DDR4 ECC
2x 32 GB RDIMM
3,200 MT/s | Dual Rank
4x 32 GB RDIMM
3,200 MT/s | Dual Rank
SSD with Appliance Firmware 1x 240 GB M.2 SSD 1x 240 GB M.2 SSD 1x 240 GB M.2 SSD
SSD's for Checkmk 2x 480 GB SSD's
Hot-Plugable, 6Gbps
configured as Raid 1
2x 960 GB SSD's
Hot-Plugable, 6Gbps
configured as Raid 1
2x 1.92 TB SSD's
Hot-Plugable, 6Gbps
configured as Raid 1
Network 4x 1 GE (Copper) 4x 10 GE (Copper) 4x 10 GE (Copper)
4x 10 Gb (SFP+)
Management Interface iDrac Enterprise License iDrac Enterprise License iDrac Enterprise License
Power Supply6 2x 350W redundant,
hot-pluggable, internal
2x 800W redundant,
hot-pluggable, internal
2x 800W redundant,
hot-pluggable, internal
Dimensions (WxDxH) 19" Rack 1U incl. telescopic slides 19" Rack 2U incl. telescopic slides 19" Rack 2U incl. telescopic slides
       
Price4 (EU)7 €4,950 + VAT €10,450 + VAT €14,950 + VAT

Maintenance

You can choose from different maintenance levels of your appliance.

Basic Advanced Premium
Phone
Email
Response Time as soon as possible 2 hours (EU) 2 hours (EU)
Spare Part Pre-exchange8  
Keep your Hard Drive9    
Shipment10 Send in for repair, checking, repair, send back Shipment on next business day, delivery on the following day Till 2 pm
Checkmk rack 1      
Price for 36 months11 (Germany) Included €400 + VAT €650 + VAT
Price for 60 months11 (Germany) Not available €925 + VAT €1,450 + VAT
Checkmk rack 4      
Price for 36 months11 (Germany) Included €1,000 + VAT €1,750 + VAT
Price for 60 months11 (Germany) Not Available €2,200 + VAT €3,450 + VAT
Checkmk rack 4+      
Price for 36 months11 (Germany) Included €1,325 + VAT €2,250 + VAT
Price for 60 months11 (Germany) Not Available €2,900 + VAT €4,500 + VAT

You have access to the appliance firmware updates as long as the appliance is under a maintenance contract.


Support

Hardware support

In case of hardware faults, please contact us via email to cma-support@checkmk.com or by phone +49 89 9982 097-20.
 

Software support

In case of software problems, please contact your respective support provider, based on the conditions of your purchased support agreement.


Notes

1 The maximum CPU count depends on the hardware used and the amount of licensed CPUs on the hypervisor.

2 This is only a recommendation. The appliance is not limited in the number of hosts or services which can be monitored with this device. The number of hosts depends on a powerful virtualization environment and is only valid if enough CPU, memory and disk IO bandwidth is available. In larger environments we suggest using the Checkmk rack1, rack4 or a dedicated server.

3 The data volume of the virtual appliance has been created with a dynamic size of up to 100 GB. This is usually enough for about 30,000 monitored services.

4 The usage of Checkmk Appliances requires a subscription of the Checkmk Monitoring System for at least one year. The services that you monitor with your appliances are charged to your normal subscription. You have access to the appliance firmware updates as long as the appliance is under warranty or maintenance contract.

5 This is only a recommendation. The precise number of monitored hosts and services is, for example, dependent on the type of device and the check frequency. The appliance is not limited per se in the number of hosts or services which it can monitor.

6 Actual power consumption will depend on usage.

7 Outside of Germany additional shipment cost will occur and outside the EU prices can differ.

8 You will receive the new spare part in advance and only have to return the old, defective hardware to us after the part has been replaced. There is no need to return hard disks as part of the Premium Service Package.

9 In the event of a hard drive failure and any necessary replacement, the hard drive remains in your possession, thus ensuring the security of classified, proprietary and confidential data. This means that replaced hard drives do not leave your facility, and that you can decide the timing and method for the secure disposal of your data, as well as retain full control over the disposal of the hard drives.

10 Shipment times are valid for Germany and begin with the ending of the response time. The service hours are: Mon-Fri, 7am-6pm CET, with the exception of bank holidays. Upon request, we are happy to provide you with potential differences for you preferred location.

11 Upon request, we are happy to provide you with the pricing for your preferred location.


Appliance FAQ

It might happen that there are several mails in the local queue on the appliance - mails which have been created due to a misconfiguration. In this case it might be useful to be able to clear the queue.

The mail queue can be deleted via the page Manage email in the Web Configuration. On this page you can delete the emails one by one if you like.

Additionally, you can delete the emails using SSH. You need to enable root access via SSH and to connect to the device as root user. After login you can execute the mailq command to take a look at the mail queue, and rm /var/spool/nullmailer/queue/* to delete all mails from the queue.

Yes. You can directly import the OVA file we provide into your Citrix Xen Host.

It is possible, but not officially supported. However, it is possible to convert the OVA file we provide to a format which can be imported to your Hyper-V server.

Yes, you can enable access of different users via SSH. You can find more details in the chapter Remote access via SSH.

Not generally. For the subscription level the number of monitored services is relevant.

When you buy a device you will receive a printed manual with your device. The up-to-date documentation can also be found on our website in the User Manual.

A cluster of two devices is always an active/passive cluster. The active device is holding all of the resources, and the passive device is ready to take over the resources, if the active device fails.

No, the appliance cluster can only have two devices.

The checkmk rack1 Mark IV and checkmk rack1 Mark V have 4 DIMM sockets for DDR3 RAM. Both can handle up to 32GB ECC unbuffered DDR3-1600MHz RAM.

The checkmk rack4 Mark II and rack4 Mark III have 16 DIMM sockets for DDR4 modules. The device can work with up to 1TB DDR4-2400 ECC RAM.

So technically it is possible to extend the RAM. You are allowed to exchange the built-in memory modules to extend the memory of the devices on your own.

Please ensure that you know what you are doing. We are not responsible for any damage done to the hardware. Please also note that using memory that is not authorized by the vendor may forfeit your warranty.

No, this is currently not possible.

As of firmware version 1.3.5 is is possible to configure VLANs using the advanced network configuration.

The checkmk rack1 Mark I has two 2.5" front mount slots.

The checkmk rack1 Mark II has 4x 3.5" front mount slots. With the current firmware you can use the first two mount slots.

The checkmk rack4 Mark I has 4x 3.5" front mount slots. With the current firmware you can use the first two mount slots.

You can use custom SSDs instead of the delivered ones. The drives are always configured as RAID-1.

Yes. You basically need to download the OVA file we provide, unpack it and convert the shipped virtual HDDs from the VMDK format to, e.g., the QCOW2 format. You can then copy these virtual hard disk files to the paths where your VM images are stored. Finally, create a VM with the parameters of your choice and use the just converted QCOW2 disk images as harddisks.

You may want to take a look at the "virt1.ovf" file to see which parameters to use for the VM you create in the next steps. Some things are mandatory:

  •    You need to give the VM at least 2 GB of memory.
  •    You need to use the BOTH of the hard disks you just converted.
  •    Use virtio for the disks for best performance.