Introducing GroundWork And…Open Source Windows Monitoring

By Dave Lilly
Co-founder and CEO GroundWork Open Source

Monitoring is a complex technical subject. Done right, it is embedded in best practices for IT Service Management business processes, personnel training and qualification as well as a pragmatic approach to monitoring system design and coverage which has long been a hallmark of GroundWork Open Source. In this series of blog posts, I will share a compilation of the lessons that GroundWork has been learning over the last five years, hoping that they will serve our customers, community, and the public. In the future, we will be talking about managing monitoring systems, SLA reporting, monitoring in the Cloud, KISS, False Alarms and other Dirty Dogs, Heroes With a Thousand Faces, De-Risking Monitoring System Acquisition, and other great topics, so If you have suggestions, please contact us at [email protected] So let’s get stared with GroundWork And…Open Source Windows Monitoring.

GroundWork and Windows Monitoring

Microsoft continues to evolve its products and standards for system monitoring and management. Characteristically, Microsoft has embraced the DTMF-standard CIM model for management but added extensions and exposed it via decidedly non-standard MS DCE/RPC and .NET interfaces to create Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). WMI is used to monitor Microsoft applications like Exchange, Sharepoint, and SQL Server as well as the Windows server operating system parameters including Windows-based clusters. In addition to using WMI as the preferred method of collecting management information from Windows, Microsoft also offers monitoring and system management software products of its own including SCOM (formerly MOM) and SMS among others.

GroundWork embraces the use of WMI to monitor Microsoft infrastructure and applications. GroundWork is the author of the open source WMI plugins that access any WMI parameter. In addition, GroundWork’s Windows Child Server is a dedicated Windows Server that is authenticated to Active Directory to enable the use of the open source WMI plugins to collect monitoring information from Microsoft OS and Applications in exactly the same way as Microsoft’s own monitoring tools. GroundWork also provides highly scalable and secure Windows/WMI-based monitoring agents that can be installed on individual Windows systems to push monitoring results and performance measurements up to the GroundWork Monitor system.

GroundWork Monitor Professional and Enterprise subscriptions include standard profiles for monitoring many Microsoft products including Windows Server, SQL Server, Active Directory, and Exchange. These standard profiles combine the necessary plug-ins and configuration necessary to monitor Windows servers and applications quickly. In addition, GroundWork has robust interfaces for the integration of MOM and SCOM into a GroundWork system, allowing administrators to gain broader and deeper visibility into their operations without the need to completely replace an existing monitoring solution. VMware ESX and Virtual Infrastructure (VI) are important components of many Windows-based infrastructures.

In heterogeneous computing environments, GroundWork provides one stop monitoring for networks, virtualized hardware, servers, applications, and services including Linux, Unix, Windows, and applications of all sorts. We also support the use of WMI for direct monitoring with GroundWork as well as comprehensive methods for integrating with Microsoft Monitoring and Systems Management products.