NCPA Agent vs. WMI

[ryanb]

Support,

I would like to monitor some Windows systems. Is there any benefit to using NCPA over WMI? I would prefer not to install anything extra on the servers unless there is a compelling reason.

Thanks,
Ryan

[WillemDH]

The biggest benefit of using an agent such as NCPA or NSClient++ (which I prefer, but only version 0.4.1.105) is that you can use Powershell scripts to monitor your server. While WMI is limited to what the WMI classes can provide, there are 'no limits' with Powershell. You can monitor for example Exchange, SharePoint and many more things. You can also resolve issue with Nagios Reactor event chains from for example a Nagios XI quick action. This would not be possible without an agent which can startup a Powershell script.

Also imho and experience WMI tends to have issues and is prone to corruption on servers with heavy load. When I write Powershell script and I have the choice between querying WMI or getting the data in some other way, I mostly choose the other way, as some WMI queries also can use quite some cpu.

Grtz

Willem

[lmiltchev]

Another advantage of NCPA and NSClient++ is that you could do passive checks if you were for example behind a firewall. With WMI, you could use active checks only.

I would recommend trying both methods in a test environment prior to deciding which one is for you.

[mp4783]

The NCPA agent supports both passive and active checks in a single agent. It also has a web accessible API that allows external services to extract information from it and a very slick user interface with real time graphing (it's quite slick).

One other thing, and I might be wrong about this, but isn't WMI being deprecated by Microsoft?

[ryanb]

Thanks guys, for your feedback.

Also imho and experience WMI tends to have issues and is prone to corruption on servers with heavy load.
Willem

When you talk about corruption- is this just to WMI's own repository, or can it cause other issues on the server?

[WillemDH]

Just WMi's own repository. Can be fixed with a WMI repair script, which has fixed the issue 90 % of the time. Basically it's just causing the monitoring to fail.

[tmcdonald]

@ryanb, did this thread answer your questions? If so I would like to close it up, otherwise please let us know what other (related) questions you have.

One other thing, and I might be wrong about this, but isn't WMI being deprecated by Microsoft?

Could not find anything specifically stating that WMI as a whole will be deprecated, just certain versions. And as one person put it (paraphrase) "Its support in PowerShell is a good indicator that it will be around for a while."

[mp4783]

To be sure, my memory is awful, so I don't doubt your statement about WMI's current relevance. I would swear, that there was supposed to be an emphasis on a more broadly supported standard (versus WMI's singular association with Windows), I guess I don't remember what that is either.

[WillemDH]

@mp4783 => Maybe you are talking about Powershell v3 or higher support for CIM / WS-Man - WinRm. http://blogs.msdn.com/b/powershell/arch ... dlets.aspx

[tmcdonald]

I'll leave the WMI future to the WMI devs :)

OP, let us know what your status is, haven't heard from you in a while.