Table of Contents

Microsoft Platform

The Microsoft Platform connector enables the monitoring of servers that run the Microsoft Windows OS.

About

The Microsoft Platform connector gathers key performance indicators from a server running the Microsoft Windows OS. To accomplish this, the connector utilizes Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) extensions to query data from the monitored server.

All versions of Microsoft Windows are supported, as long as the connector is able to retrieve data using WMI.

Version Info

Range Description DCF Integration Cassandra Compliant
1.1.3.x [SLC Main - Virtual Machine Environment] Branched from 1.1.0.97: Contains partitionedTrending database option. Difference between 1.1.3.x and 1.1.0.x branch will not be noticeable with Cassandra general database, only with MySQL general database. Version 1.1.3.5 merged with 1.1.0.106. Yes Yes
6.0.0.x [SLC Main - Physical Hardware Environment] Branched from 1.1.2.31: Microsoft WMI interface + interface for DELL-, HP-, and Supermicro-specific SNMP parameters. Yes Yes
Important

Currently, only the ranges listed above are supported. In case you are currently using a different range of the connector, we recommend migrating to one of the supported ranges.

Configuration

When creating an element using this connector, apart from the element name and the protocol fields, the only required field to be populated is the IP address. In this field, you must specify the IP address assigned to the server running Microsoft Windows OS that will be monitored.

Important

When you create an element to monitor the DataMiner Agent hosting the element, the administrator built-in account will be used to query the server. In case the element will monitor a remote server, you must configure the appropriate credentials on the Security page.

In addition, WMI and DCOM must be properly configured on the server to be monitored, as detailed below.

WMI configuration

  1. To go to WMI Control Properties, go to Start > Run and enter wmimgmt.msc.
  2. Right-click WMI Control (Local) and select Properties.
  3. On the Security tab page, go to \Root\CIMV2 and click the Security button.
  4. Add the user that will be used to query data from the remote server to the list and give the user all rights.
  5. Apply all.

DCOM configuration

  1. Go to Start > Run and enter dcomcnfg (Component Services).
  2. Under Component Services > Computers, right-click My Computer and select Properties.
  3. Go to the tab COM Security.
  4. Under Launch and Activation Permissions, click Edit Limits.
  5. Add the user and give the user the Local Launch, Remote Launch, and Remote Activation permissions.
  6. Apply all.
Note
  • After DCOM settings have been changed, the WMI services sometimes need to be restarted.
  • This method works fine for a Windows XP system but cannot be used on a Windows Server 2003 SP1.
  • On a Win2K3, the local user must be added to the administrators group.
  • On a Win2K8, the local user must be added to the administrators group, Distributed COM Users, and Performance Monitor Users.

Usage

Performance

Security

This page displays settings that will be used by WMI to query the remote server.

  • Username: The user account used for querying the remote server.
  • Password: The password associated with the user account.
  • Domain Name: Required only if the user account belongs to a domain controller. If a local user is used to query the server, this parameter can be left blank.

Port Monitoring

This page allows you to configure the port monitoring feature in this connector, which enables you to verify whether a port is opened or closed and to measure any response delay.

To enable this feature:

  1. On the Performance page, click the Port monitoring button.
  2. Define a Polling Period.
  3. Use the Add Port box to add one or more ports that need to be monitored in the Port List.
  4. Finally, enable the port monitoring feature by clicking the toggle button next to Port Monitoring Status.

Ping Monitoring

This page allows you to configure the ping monitoring feature available in this connector. This feature allows you to perform a ping command on the remote server.

To enable this feature:

  1. On the Performance page, click the Ping monitoring button.
  2. Click the toggle button next to Ping Query to execute the ping.
  3. Configure the Ping Cycle, i.e. the interval between each ping. The default value is 60 s.
  4. Configure the Ping Timeout and Ping Number. The default values are 1500 ms and 4 respectively.

Task Manager

The Task Manager page lists all the processes run by the monitored server (similar to the Task Manager tool available in any Microsoft Windows OS). Each entry in the Task Manager table represents a process active on the monitored server.

By default, the connector will poll all the running processes on the monitored server. You can modify this behavior by setting the parameter Poll Task Manager to Off.

Also by default, the connector will remove any process that is no longer running from the Task Manager table. You can modify this behavior by setting the parameter Auto Clear Task Manager to Off

Tip

If you wish to monitor when a process is no longer running, set the parameter Auto Clear Task Manager to Off. By enabling monitoring on the parameter Row Status, you can then generate an alarm when a process is no longer running.

The button Clear Task Manager allows you to clear the Task Manager table manually. This button is useful only if the parameter Auto Clear Task Manager is set to Off

To set the current values in the table as the normal reference for alarms, click the button Normalize Alarms. You can then view these references via the Nominal Values button at the bottom of the page.

Important

The Normalize Alarms feature is deprecated. Instead, we recommend configuring dynamic alarm thresholds.

It is also possible to add a filter to calculate the sum of the memory usage of all processes that match this filter. To do so:

  1. Click the button Cumulated Memory at the bottom of the page.

  2. Enter a filter in the box Add Filter Param. An asterisk (*) wildcard is supported in this filter. You can also use an exclamation mark (!) to return the opposite cumulated memory of the filter parameter. (See examples below.)

    Examples Description
    SLDatam* Searches for processes that begin with "SLDatam"
    *Dataminer* Searches for processes that contain the word "DataMiner"
    miner:0* Searches for processes that end with "miner:0"
    SLDataminer:0 Searches for the process "SLDataminer:0"
    !SLDatam* Searches for processes that do not begin with "SLDatam"
    !*Dataminer* Searches for processes that do not contain the word "DataMiner"
    !miner:0* Searches for processes that do not end with "miner:0"
    !SLDataminer:0 Searches for processes that are not equal to "SLDataminer:0"

If necessary, add more filters, or delete filters using the Delete button next to the filtered parameter.

Task Manager Measurement

Clicking the button Measurement Config will open the Task Measurement Config page. This page allows you to customize the processes listed in the Task Manager table. The following parameters are available for this:

  • The parameter Task Manager Default Measurement State will enable/disable the measurement of new processes.
  • The parameter Task Manager Auto Refresh Measurement Table allows you to automatically refresh the Task Manager Measurement Config table.
  • The parameter Task Manager Auto Clear Measurement Table allows you to automatically remove processes that are no longer running on the server.

In addition, the buttons Disable All, Enable All, Clear, and Refresh allow you to manually perform the actions covered by the parameters listed above.

To disable or enable the monitoring of a specific process in the Task Manager table (i.e. remove or add the process from/to the Task Manager table), proceed as follows:

  1. Locate the process to be removed in the Task Manager Measurement Config table.
  2. In the column Task Polling, set the value to Disable or Enable accordingly.
Note

By default, the Task Manager Measurement Config table will list the same processes as the Task Manager table, and the column Task Polling will be set to Not Initialized.

Network Interface

This page displays the Network Adapter table. This table monitors the network adapters available in the server.

Note

The bandwidth of an adapter can be very high (e.g. 10 GB/s). Therefore, as the utilization gets calculated as the total speed divided by the bandwidth, the utilization value can be extremely low. It can even be rounded down to 0.00 % if Total Speed < 0.005 * Bandwidth.

By default, the column Adapter Description will contain the name of the adapter as retrieved by WMI. However, in some cases, the connector will not be able to retrieve the name. If this is the case, it is possible to customize this name of the adapter.

Important

Once the column Adapter Description is set manually, the connector will not overrule this setting. Updating the name could cause metrics related to this network adapter to not be retrieved. If you set a network adapter to a description that is already used by another adapter, the description of the other adapter will be set to an empty string.

On the Network Adapter Measurement page, you can disable processes to remove them from the Network Adapter table.

  • The parameter Network Adapter Default Measurement State allows you to enable/disable the measurement of new adapters.

  • The Clear button removes all deleted processes from the Network Adapter Measurement and Network Adapter table. This is by default followed by a refresh.

  • The Refresh button can be used to manually refresh the list of network adapters and the additional information.

You can also entirely disable the polling of the network adapters with the toggle button Poll Network Adapters.

Once an adapter is disconnected and not found by the connector, its status will be set to Disconnected. You can choose to either remove such adapters automatically (using the button Auto Clear Disconnected Adapters) or manually delete them using the parameter Manually Clear Disconnected Adapters.

Note

The parameter Manually Clear Disconnected Adapters will only list disconnected adapters.

Disk Info

This page provides information about local storage devices on a server running Windows.

Tip

A sign that could indicate that the disk is busy is the Latency, i.e. how long it takes before it can process something. This metric can be tracked with the parameter Avg Disk sec/Transfer Rate.

Event Viewer

This page displays information regarding selected or created events.

When you enable the Event Viewer, you can monitor the events displayed in the Event Viewer table.

If you want to add events, click the Add event page button. If you click Load, all the event messages from a specific time interval will be retrieved and displayed on the page. You can then select the events you want to monitor by clicking the Monitor Event button. The time interval can be changed using the slider.

To delete a monitored event, click the Delete button in the Event Viewer table.

The event details can be configured. For each type of event (information, warning, or error), the severity of the created alarm can be selected from the dropdown list. For example: "Disk Crash" event with a Severity Error Type equal to Critical.

When the configured Alarm Type equals Normal and an event occurs that matches one of the added filters in the Event Viewer Messages table, the new event will automatically trigger an alarm or an information event. Alarm Type Grouped will add the row to the Grouped Event Alarms with the most recent severity of the event. When the Grouped Event Active Time expires, the event is removed from the table. Grouped events will not create alarms automatically, but you can configure alarm monitoring on the Grouped Event Type column.

From version 1.1.0.100 onwards, it is possible to get all events except those with a specific Event ID. In each row of the table, a toggle button Exclude Event ID has been added:

  • If it is set to the default setting Include, you can insert a single event ID or the value "*" to get all event IDs for the relevant source/category (= equal to all previous versions).

  • If it is set to Exclude, you can select a single event ID, which will be omitted from the results. All other event IDs will be selected.

Performance Monitor

This page monitors performance counters added by the user.

On the Config Performance Counters page, you can search for performance counters and add them to the Performance Monitor table:

  1. Click Refresh Categories to create a dropdown list with the Categories.
  2. Select the category and then select a Counter. If the counter has multiple instances, you can either select the Instance you want, or select <All Instances>.
  3. Finally, click the Add Counter button to add the selected counter to the table.

With the Performance Monitor Sample Time, you can configure the sample time for all created performance counters.

Dell

This page focuses on Dell computer hardware.

It monitors certain high-level parameters, such as the name, version, and model. It also includes pages with more information on specific categories:

  • The Temperature Probe Table provides information about the temperature of the device.
  • A page is available for the power supply, fans, CPU, and memory information for the device.
  • The Disk page provides an overview of all the disks included in the system.
Important

In order to monitor these parameters, you have to enable polling on the Dell page.

HP

This page focuses on HP computer hardware.

It monitors the same set of parameters as the Dell page described above.

Important

In order to monitor these parameters, you have to enable polling on the HP page.

Software Info

This page contains the Software Info Table, which displays a list of all installed programs. Note: USERNAME and PASSWORD have to be set! (Under Performance > Security Settings).

Above the table, it is possible to select the polling method. (Alternative methods were introduced after problems were encountered with the used WMI Query.)

  • No Polling: Nothing will be retrieved, and the table will remain empty.
  • Win32_Product: WMI Query used to retrieve a list of all installed programs. We strongly advise not to use this method, as this can perform a Windows Installer "reconfiguration" on every MSI package as it is performing the query.
  • Win32reg_AddRemoveProgram: WMI Query used to retrieve a list of all installed programs if Microsoft CSSM software is installed. This is a better alternative to the Win32_Product method.
  • Registry Keys: Recommended method. This method will use WMI to read the registry keys to display a list of all installed programs in the system.

Troubleshooting

Access is denied with error code 0x80070005 (or 0x80041003)

Symptom

The following errors are shown in the Stream Viewer (when looking at the communication of any group):

  • Access is denied with error code 0x80070005
  • Access is denied with error code 0x80041003

Cause

The username does not have enough permissions to query the server, specifically when performing remote WMI queries using non-admin users.

Resolution

  • Access is denied with error code 0x80070005: See DCOM configuration

  • Access is denied with error code 0x80041003: See WMI configuration

  • If the above options do not solve the issue, try to open Windows Explorer on the monitored server, using the username that you configured on the Settings page. If it is not possible to connect to the server because you have to log on with the account guest, execute the following steps:

    1. Go to Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Local Security Policy.
    2. Go to Local Policies > Security Options.
    3. Double-click Network access: Sharing and security model for local accounts.
    4. Select Classic- local users authenticate as themselves.
Note

To confirm that a user does not have the rights to perform WMI queries, you can proceed as follows:

  1. Click Start > Run and execute wmimgmt.msc.
  2. Right-click WMI Control (Local) and select Connect to another computer.
  3. Select Actions > More Actions > Properties.

At this point, you will receive the following error:

Failed to connect to [\\%RemoteIP%](file:///) because "Win32 Access is denied".

If the above steps are not possible, you could also run wmimgmt.msc directly on the server (from CMD or PowerShell). You will receive the following error: Microsoft Management Console "An attempt was made to reference a token that does not exist".

Not all parameters are initialized

Symptom

A Microsoft element displays a partial set of the data. Some parameters, such as Local Time, Total Physical Memory, etc. are populated, while others like Total Processor Load, Total Handles remain not initialized. Looking at the Stream Viewer, you notice certain queries do not return any results.

Cause

There can be different possible causes for this behavior. Refer to the possible resolutions below.

Resolution

  • Check the element timeout settings. When an element is created, these are the default values:

    • Timeout of a single command: 6000 ms
    • Number of retries: 3

    Update the timeout value if necessary, and validate whether the element is now able to poll all parameters.

  • Execute the following command (using CMD or PowerShell) to manually reset the counters with WMI (for more information, refer to Microsoft Learn):

    winmgmt.exe /resyncperf

  • Verify whether the user used to query the server is included in the group Performance Monitor Users.

Query failed: Retrieving the data failed. (hr = 0x80041010)

Symptom

Stream Viewer shows the following error:

Query failed : Retrieving the data failed. (hr = 0x80041010) for numerous WQL SELECT queries.

Cause

Some or all related Disable Performance Counters in regedit for PerfDisk, PerfNet, PerfOS, PerfProc, Tcpip, or W3SVC are set to 1. With the path below, you can confirm if these counters are disabled:

"HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\PerfProc\Performance\

When wbemtest is used and these queries are performed, or the classes are listed, this results in similar errors mentioning "Invalid class".

Solution

Set all these to 0, and after a couple of minutes the query errors should disappear and the related data should get filled in.

Contacting Server Failed: Connection to root/cimv2 failed. The RPC server is unavailable

Symptom

The following error occurs:

Contacting server failed: Connection to \[//server/root/cimv2\] failed. The RPC server is unavailable. (hr = 0x800706BA).

Cause

Configuration issue on the remote server.

Solution

  • Make sure TCP/135 and TCP/49000-65535 (WMI) are open.
  • Make sure the user is created on server and host.

Performance Monitoring not working

Symptom

The element is able to populate all parameters, except the Performance Monitor. Clicking Refresh Categories triggers the following error in element logging:

Exception Perf Counters The network path was not found.

Cause

Possible configuration issue on the remote server.

Solution

Check if the destination computer has the "Remote Registry" service running. If not, start this service. (Note that you may need to adjust the Startup Type from Disabled to Manual/automatic first.)

Percent Disk Busy Time goes above 100%

Symptom

The parameter Percent Disk Busy Time shows values higher than 100%.

Cause

By design.

Resolution

Not applicable. More information can be found in the Microsoft Knowledge Base.

Additional Notes

Windows Vista

From Windows 2000 onwards, WMI is installed by default. Except in Windows Vista, WMI uses random ports. To configure a fixed port in Windows Vista:

  1. In the command prompt window, type winmgmt -standalonehost.
  2. Stop the WMI service by typing the command net stop "Windows Management Instrumentation".
  3. Restart the WMI service in a new service host by typing net start "Windows Management Instrumentation".
  4. Establish a new port number for the WMI service by typing netsh firewall add portopening port=24158 name=WMIFixedPort.

If you want to have access to the WMI interface of a Windows XP computer, you can work with a local user (a group user, not an administrator) that has the necessary Windows security rights, so extra configuration is necessary on the client computers.

Re-registering the WMI component on the monitored server

In some situations, you will need to re-register the WMI component in the monitored server.

  • For 32-bit Windows OS, the .dll and .exe files used by WMI are located in %windir%\system32\wbem.
  • For 64-bit Windows OS, these files are located in %windir%\sysWOW64\wbem.

To re-register the WMI components, run the following commands with the command prompt:

cd /d %windir%\system32\wbem*
for %i in (*.dll) do RegSvr32 -s %i
for %i in (*.exe) do %i /RegServer

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