Applications Systems

Services Monitor - WMI vs RPC vs SNMP

Information for monitoring options via: SNMP (MIB OIDs) WMI (WMI Counters) and Windows Performance Counters (RPC)

First published date

10/9/2018 4:43 PM

Last published date

1/7/2022 6:00 PM

Overview

Protocols to monitor Services in SAM

Basically you can monitor Services via:

  • SNMP (MIB OIDs)
  • WMI (WMI Counters) and 
  • Windows Performance Counters (RPC)

Product section

Server Application Monitor

Resolution

SNMP 

  • For example in SAM you don't see what SNMP is being monitored, but pulls from likes of these OID's 1.3.6.1.2.1.25.4.2.1.x HOST-RESOURCES-MIB.
  • SNMP requires much less bandwidth to poll than WMI.
  • Some details on this: SNMP and WMI polling comparison

It uses its own SNMP service, does not use the RPC service.
SAM help reference material: 

An advantage to SNMP also is that it will retry the poll 3 times before marking it as unknown.
- WMI is not capable of doing at the moment. 
- If the WMI query fails to get a response on first attempt, it marks the component as unknown. SNMP will try 2 more times, then mark it as unknown.


​WMI 

  • WMI Monitor 
  • Example of how we use WQL to pull Services:
  • SELECT * FROM Win32_Service
    SELECT * FROM Win32_Process
    SELECT * FROM Win32_PerfRawData_PerfProc_Process
  • Testing WMI Connectivity

RPC 

  • Windows Service Monitor

    Windows Performance Counters (RPC):

  • This is same as running cmd -> PERFMON

  • On windows Servers the Operating System maintains all this counters and we can pull from them.

  • RPC & SNMP has a retry feature which means that it will try to collect the data up to three times should it fail on any of the first polls


Also there are Documents on WMI\SMNP on site in links below and Videos Tutorials.

 

Orion Demo

  • SolarWinds Online Orion Demo
  • Look at demo site to see fully up and running Demo of Orion and all its Modules,
  • Here you can see Various views and devices being monitored along with other interesting Orion Modules like SAM, VNQM, IPAM, NTA.