WMI Monitoring Software

Microsoft Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI) is a Microsoft technology offering poll management resulting in useful performance information from your Windows applications and network devices. You can analyze and use data collected through WMI components to gauge the health and performance of devices, servers, and applications.

WMI has been built into the Windows OS since Windows 2000, is enabled by default, and offers straightforward functionality not requiring configuration to use. And with WMI, there’s no need to install agent software on endpoints you’d like to monitor—it allows you to use agentless monitoring with your Windows servers and workstations.

The WMI protocol is considered an alternative to SNMP polling, as it provides similar monitoring and management capabilities while offering additional security and communication features specific to Windows. It lets you both read and change device settings as needed.

WMI provides insight into network devices over time, as metrics change as devices operate, for historical performance tracking. With WMI, it’s possible to check the values of various operating system metrics—for instance, check storage capacity, free storage volume, and more for an operating hard disk drive. With an automated tool incorporating WMI monitoring, you can set alerts to let you know when specific metric thresholds are breached.

WMI monitoring offers several essential capabilities, especially when leveraged through a dedicated tool.

Improved network awareness: As a business operates, the sheer number of computer processes taking place at once (along with their components) is far too overwhelming for any IT administrator to keep track of on their own. While WMI naturally tracks event log files and hardware statistics, WMI monitoring applications organize data, filter through irrelevant notifications, and allow for customizable management, so polled information is clear, concise, pertinent, and highly accessible.

Understand trends and make predictions: WMI monitoring can make it possible to create historical baselines to help identify typical resource consumption.

Troubleshoot with speed: SAM offers insight into critical metrics and can connect to automated alerts for faster visibility. Real-time visibility allows faster troubleshooting, including stopping rogue or expensive processes and server reboots.

Asset inventory: WMI monitoring may help you scan your Windows environment and create an asset inventory with data about drivers, hard drives, network interfaces, software, and more.

There are significant advantages and disadvantages with SNMP and WMI affecting operational functionality in specific ways. If you’re considering using one or the other with SAM, here’s what you should know:

WMI polling is a web-based data extraction method used to monitor functionality and administer data for devices and platforms running on the Windows built-in management interface. It allows remote access to user activity on a shared network through agents communicating via XML and HTTP. WMI polling gives authorized users insight into the workings of their network and the devices, applications, and software using it with greater flexibility and customization. Additionally, WMI polling directs managers to changes as they happen for real-time visibility and regulatory control.

WMI polling is straightforward. It’s built-in for Windows systems and automatically integrates settings with SAM templates for a more user-friendly experience, and includes real-time reboots for reliable and updated metrics. It has no impact on RAM or CPU compared with ping monitoring.

However, WMI polling does involve an average increase of 12 Kbps in general (only 4 Kbps more than SNMP). Overall, it doesn’t work well with latency, making it best suited to LANs instead of congested or long-distance WAN links, which may better serve SNMP monitoring. WMI requires more firewall ports, is inoperable across network address translation (NAT)-ed WAN connections, and can encounter disruptions due to Application Directory (AD) credential changes. A single password change can disrupt monitoring if you’re not careful. Also, WMI doesn’t offer topology monitoring.

Simple Network Management Protocol (SNMP) polling is known as an application-layer engine for monitoring hardware and software from a majority of vendor types, including Cisco, VMware, Microsoft, and more. Since the 1980s, SNMP has been a common and reliable method for monitoring network activity across long distances. By collecting Management Information Base (MIB) information from devices, SNMP polling facilitates automatic multi-user monitoring through a universal interface without constant manual upkeep. While SNMP is pre-installed in most devices, it’s often turned off by default. Once configured and activated, the latest SNMP version (SNMP v3) offers robust security measures to protect transmitted and stored data.

In terms of hardware energy and storage expenditure, SNMP polling is 2-6% more efficient than WMI polling. With SNMP, there’s generally better protection and security through limited firewall ports and no single point of failure for access. It uses CPU, RAM, and bandwidth efficiently, both on target and poller.

On the other hand, SNMP has a few limitations. Its substantial configurations must be set prior to use, and compatibility is restricted with older Windows OSes (like NT and 2000). Plus, changing an SNMP string requires enterprise-wide adjustments.

As WMI monitoring software, SolarWinds Server & Application Monitor (SAM) offers several types of component monitors for monitoring elements like services, processes, or logs. WMI Monitor, in particular, leverages the WMI process, meaning it sends WMI Query Language (WQL) queries and, in return, gains performance data as calculated by WMI providers (such as Windows OS or Microsoft Exchange Server).

The WMI Monitor harnesses information from WMI providers already built into Windows-based devices via WinRM polling for faster, more secure communication. With over 1200 SAM templates, many plugins, applications, and systems used in your environment—including Linux, Apache, AIX, Bind, Cisco, JMX, and more—are covered and presented in readable, fully-customizable formats for ease and accessibility.

These templates let you collect key performance metrics. Get insight into disk queue length, page file usage, and more.

This application software uses the Orion^® Platform as an architectural base, connecting your entire IT infrastructure and displaying relevant information all in one place. You get built-in charts and metrics to help you see relevant information quickly.

Identify when server resources reach critical thresholds.

Get insight into capacity trends over time to make it easier to predict future resource requirements.

From hardware status and functionality to server speed times and efficiency and application-based edits, our Windows WMI monitoring tool makes it easy to find and smooth out areas of trouble.

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