Using WMI to stay on top network performance

As a network engineer, manager, or admin, you probably feel pulled in multiple directions on a daily basis, whether dealing with new security threats, handling HIPAA or SOX audits, or tracking an employee who thinks it’s alright to download HALO 3 using the much quicker corporate network.

Ultimately, your job, regardless of all other tasks is to keep atop anything that might turn into a crisis, such as an e-mail server slowdown. With so many tasks to manage and so little time, one way to track many network devices is by using SNMP and WMI technologies.

The majority of you will be familiar with SNMP, but WMI (Windows Management Instrumentation) is another technology that device monitoring software, like Network General NetVigil, Network Instruments Link Analyst, and Ipswitch’s WhatsUp Gold, use to tap into on Windows XP, 2003, and 2000 machines and monitor availability, system resources, and performance. WMI queries the operating system for information about the hardware and then reports back to the monitoring software.

Most monitoring software will use WMI in two ways: to gather historical data on device performance counters and to monitor the counters and alert you when they do not match the criteria you establish.

In addition to the default monitoring views presented by the software, you can often write scripts that query the WMI database of a specific network resource. So, if disk space on a back-up server or the e-mail server hits 90%, you’d receive some type of alert. WMI can be used to track everything from memory leaks and removable drives attached to a server to monitoring network connections and uptime.

WMI, device monitoring, and WMI scripts resources:
WMI: Introduction to WMI – Windows Hardware Developer Center
Script Center Repository – Download WMI scripts
Monitor Your PC’s Health – Basic Intro to WMI and writing scripts
WMI Architecture Basics – ASKPerf (Great WMI resources)
WMI Scripting Primer – Microsoft site
WMI – Wikipedia’s take