Versions Compared

Key

  • This line was added.
  • This line was removed.
  • Formatting was changed.

...

In NMIS version 8.6.0 we've added support for collecting data from Windows systems using the Windows Management Instrumentation infrastructure (or WMI for short WMI). As of NMIS9 support for domains has been enhanced to make it easier to configure.

This this page describes how to approach modelling devices for WMI, and where WMI modelling differs from modelling for SNMP.

...

To collect WMI data NMIS has to use a WMI access tool. As of NMIS 8.6.0 we are using wmic, a commandline tool belonging to the Samba software suite.

NMIS 8.6.0 ships with a precompiled wmic program, and installs it as /usr/local/nmis8/bin/wmic. If the precompiled version should not work on your platform, the installer will notify you of that problem and you'll have to perform a manual build of wmic. The sources for wmic can be downloaded here: http://dl-nmis.opmantek.com/wmic-omk.tgz and you shouldn't have to do more than unpack that, and run make. When the build is complete, you should copy the resulting  wmic file to /usr/local/nmis8/bin/.

...

If the node in question requires a windows domain for the WMI access, then In NMIS 8 prepend that to the wmiusername followed by a "/", e.g. "somedomain/theuser".
In  In NMIS 8.6.7 and newer you can also provide the domain in the form "theuser@somedomain".
In NMIS9, in addition to the NMIS8 syntax, there is a dedicated 'WMI Domain' field to make configuration easier.


Automatic model selection does include WMI as a source of information, if SNMP is not available and if wmiusername and wmipassword are set.  Automatic Model selection in NMIS uses the device property "sysDescr" (an SNMP property) for WMI only devices the sysDescr is auto created from the WMI received variables "winosname" and "winversion"  e.g getNodeInfo, winosname=Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Datacenter winversion=10.0.14393 this string is then interpreted to sysDescr as Microsoft Windows Server 2016 Datacenter Windows Version 10.0.14393.  


Modelling Preparation

We recommend that you verify the availability of WMI (and your credentials) with wmic, before performing any modelling work. This should be done using the wmic tool on your NMIS server, like in the following example:

...

Besides using the standard Widows models that NMIS ships with as examples, you will likely also need to consult the online WMI reference documentation for determining what is available in the WMI universe where and how to tell NMIS about it.

WMI Troubleshooting

wmi is supposed to The wmic client will accept a user in the following format: 

...

To test this exactly command, a file /tmp/authfile with the following information is needed (and for NMIS9, 'domain = domain' is supported as well):

Code Block
username = user
password = name

...

Even though, the model should be discovered automatically, the same as in SNMP. 

More info - Using WMI to query and monitor Windows devices

More WMI troubleshooting documentation can be found here

WMI Modelling in a nutshell

...