A (pretty) Complete Windows Monitoring Solution

I put together a little package to get useful information from Windows 2000, 2003 Servers and even XP workstations if you wish. The 2000 server implementation requires a bit more work, as you cannot generate a full list of all items which may be monitored. It is, however, still possible to navigate to and get the name of an item to be monitored.

What delighted me is how easy it is to monitor application services like Oracle DB or any other third party software running as a process on your server. There is truly a wealth of information available.

The typeperf.exe command will show you a list of registered system objects, typically used in perfmon, the windows performance monitoring application. You may use the UserParameter section in zabbix_agentd.conf to query any of these values. The output of typeperf.exe is hundreds of entries and will continue to output data until you cancel it with ^c. It is best to pipe the output to a text file so that you may peruse the list at your leisure.

  Note: Windows 2000 does not have ''typeperf.exe'' unless you get a copy of it and drop it
  into the Windows\System folder. This is perfectly safe to do. The program was once 
  included in a Windows 2000 Server Resource kit which is no longer available from 
  Microsoft. I was able to find a copy at http://www.dynawell.com/support/ResKit/win2k.asp.
  (I was not able to get this to work on all of my 2000 servers. Work-around featured below.)

Windows 2003 server and Windows XP come with this program.

For a list of system objects you may query on your Windows server, try the command typeperf -qx > typeperf.txt and then examine the contents of the output file. Copy and paste together list of items you wish to monitor.

Install the Zabbix agent on your Windows server by placing the the ZabbixW32.exe, and zabbix_agentd.conf files on the server. I like to place these in a c:\zabbix folder.

Zabbix_agend.conf

• Edit the Server= IP address to the address of your Zabbix server.
• Edit the Hostname= to the machine name of your server.
• Edit the ListenIP= to the ip address of this machine.
• I set DisableActive=1, as I only want to use passive mode.
• Edit LogFile=C:\Zabbix\zabbix_agentd.log

From the command line, register the agent service and reference your configuration file.

 ZabbixW32.exe --config c:\zabbix\zabbix_agentd.conf install

You will want to give each of your monitored items a name which makes sense. Below are a few examples. Note that on this particular server BASP Virtual Adaptors appear as the ethernet interfaces. Yours may be Intel, 3Com, or some other.

 PerfCounter = NetIn,"\Network Interface(BASP Virtual Adapter)\Bytes Received/sec",30
 PerfCounter = NetOut,"\Network Interface(BASP Virtual Adapter)\Bytes Sent/sec",30
 PerfCounter = vm.memory.size[used],"\Memory\Committed Bytes",30

Note that many of the item names have spaces, so you should place them in quotation marks.

You may then start the service, either by going to Start → Administrative Tools → Services, or by running:

 ZabbixW32 start

You must restart this service in case you make any changes to the configuration file.

I find it useful to use zabbix_get to test the query you are running, to make sure that it functions as intended on the Windows server. Zabbix_get is located in /usr/local/bin/zabbix on my server. The syntax is:

 zabbix_get -sip address -kparameter name

Use the result, and the Zabbix client log file on your Windows box, to troubleshoot any problems.

Belly up to your Zabbix web interface and login as Administrator. Go to Configuration → Hosts and add new host. You will want to specify the IP address of the host. Once you have created your host, click on its Items link and create a new Item. Give it a descriptive name, select Zabbix Agent as the Type. Enter the parameter name as the Key. Select Float as the Data Type. Configure the remaining parameters according to the type of data and your needs.

Many 2000 servers will not output a list with typeperf.exe -qx. I have not found a rememdy for this. You may still get your item references though. You will just have to do a little navigation with the Perfmon (Performance Monitor) application. Run perfmon.exe and click on the + button to browse through the items you may monitor. Select such items and you may copy and paste the names of them into a text file for your monitered items.

I would love to provide a screenshot of perfmon here, but cannot figure out how to upload an image.