WMI Monitoring

WMI Monitoring

In-depth Visibility into Windows Systems and Application Discovery and Health

Looking for a network management tool that incorporates Windows systems and applications infrastructure all in a single unified view? It would certainly save you the pain of swivel chair management and the need to learn and operate multiple tools as you address infrastructure issues.

As complex as your infrastructure is – it’s likely your application problems may result from either systems or network issues or both. For effective troubleshooting, you really need to be able to drill down across your network and Windows applications and systems infrastructure on a single screen.

A Single Unified View with WhatsUp Gold

WhatsUp Gold Premium, Distributed and MSP editions can easily monitor WMI-enabled systems and applications, many of them right out of the box. WhatsUp Gold was one of the first network and application management solutions to fully support WMI to provide complete monitoring capability for Windows desktop and server OSs and applications. With such a head start, WhatsUp Gold continues to lead the way in WMI monitoring.

With WhatsUp Gold WMI Monitoring capabilities you can:

1. Monitor the health of Windows based servers, desktops and applications to pro-actively understand and resolve issues before they become real problems.
2. Troubleshoot instances of application failure by tracking component processes and host server workloads.
3. Manage availability and performance of popular business applications like MS Exchange and MS SQL Server.
4. Create custom monitors for any WMI-enabled application whether middleware or web based including virtual environments.

What is WMI and why is it useful?

Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is the underlying protocol for publishing of management and operations data on Windows-based operating systems and applications. WMI is based upon the Desktop Management Task Force (DMTF) standard and is a specific set of extensions to the Windows Driver Model that provides an operating system interface through which instrumented components provide information and notification. Most Microsoft server and desktop operating systems and applications have built-in WMI support.

Out-of-the-Box WMI Monitoring                                                                                                      WhatsUp Gold Premium, Distributed and MSP versions provide out-of-the-box monitoring for a host of popular Windows Operating Systems and applications at a process and service level. Supported application versions include Windows 2003, XP, Vista and Server 2008 OS’s, Microsoft Exchange 2000/2003, 2007 and 2010 beta and MS SQL 2005 and 2008. Custom monitors for many other middleware and web applications like IIS and Microsoft CRM that expose performance data using WMI can also be easily set up. Monitored metrics include systems resources (like CPU, disk and memory utilization) as well as specific process performance counters (like MS Exchange Mailbox and Transport server).

Performance Monitoring with WMI
All versions of WhatsUp Gold offer support for WMI via custom Performance Monitors. Custom performance monitors can be assigned thresholds for alerting and notification. Within WhatsUp Gold Premium, Distributed and MSP versions, custom Active Monitoring scripts can also be created utilizing WMI counters.

Typical Problem Solving Scenarios                                                                                                            WMI monitoring using WhatsUp Gold enables you to rapidly identify and resolve system and application performance problems:

1. Identify overloaded applications by tracking the amount of systems resources they consume over time – usually tracked through CPU and memory utilization by core executable processes.
2. Increase in number of processes waiting in queue may indicate ensuing performance degradation and necessitate preemptive action.
3. Individual process monitoring like MS Exchange Replication may help troubleshoot and resolve failures in email data arc.