Windows Servers Monitoring

[tberger]

Hi all,
I am new to Nagios.
I installed it and starting configure it in order to monitor servers.
Now only the ping works.

I have several questions regarding Windows Servers Monitoring:
1. What is the best monitoring method that uses the least resources on the servers?
2. How to get the appropriate client/plugin to the selected method?
3. Are the services definitions for windows, especially the commands that came with the standard installation of 4.0.8 made for nsclient++? Meaning every plugin has its own commands.
4. If I need to monitor applications like IIS & SQL Server do I need other plugins?

Thank you very much.

[slansing]

Well, passive checks will typically take the least resources, you could set up NCPA on the system to use NRDP:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/ncpa ... ation.html

You could alternatively use NSClient++ which is what you had mentioned, there are no already created configurations that I can think of besides those noted here:

http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/ ... ndows.html

You can monitor both processes and services with either method.

[tberger]

Thank you for your suggestions.
From the searches I did I also encounter agentless monitoring in Nagios for example using WMI.
What about it, is it consider being a good method regarding performance impact on the servers monitored?

[slansing]

Sure, it works just as well as any other method, and better in some cases, when talking about very windows specific checks, since it is already baked in. You can follow this guide, at least for the portion of setting up WMI on the remote windows system, then use check_wmi_plus or an alternative to run the checks from nagios:

http://assets.nagios.com/downloads/nagi ... ios-XI.pdf