Monitor server health with Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) Monitor

The WMIMonitor service can monitor any device that supports Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). This information will show up in the Network Management Console (NMC), and it can be used to cause alarms to be generated and failovers/shutdowns to occur.

WMI is an abstract programmer Application Programming Interface (API) that enables you to write monitoring software to use a single API but retrieve information from any hardware device (for example, disks, network cards). When you install a new device, as long as the device supports WMI (and you install appropriate WMI drivers), then you can display information about the device within the NMC.

To show a new device within the NMC, you must install the WMI drivers for your device. If they exist, these will be supplied by the device vendor.

Once you have installed the WMI drivers from your hardware vendor, you can configure the WMI Monitor to publish this information to the NMC. This configuration is done through the ConfigureWMIMonitor tool.

Note: Showing device information in the NMC does not automatically result in alarms or events being generated when the device fails. That is, identifying what constitutes a failure for your device is specific to the device in question. This identification is something that may require a custom component built on a per-project basis.