Monitor Windows 2003 using nagios + SNMP

[Kevin Keane]

A couple of notes:

- SNMP runs over UDP while NRPE uses TCP. UDP can be more finicky with 
the firewall, because it is more difficult for the firewall to match up 
the response with the original message.

- Stupid question: did you enable SNMP on the Windows server, and 
configure it (by default, the Windows SNMP agent does NOT use the public 
community).

- If the firewall uses NAT, remember that you need to specify the 
firewall's IP address in the check-command, and you need to configure 
the firewall to send the traffic to the actual server you want to 
monitor. I'm sure you already have that set up correctly, since you'd 
need the same thing for the NRPE test that you said works.

- What specific "better information" do you get via SNMP? The reason I'm 
asking is that I wrote a very extensive (and still growing) set of 
plugins that may give you the information you need - and if those 
plugins don't give you what you need, let me know, and I can probably 
add one that does. The plugins should work with NSClient++ although I 
haven't tested it. This plugin collection is on Sourceforge as 
http://sourceforge.net/projects/tntnagiosplugin/

- For my own monitoring, I wrote yet another Windows agent specifically 
to deal with firewall issues. It does not need any ports opened in the 
firewall at all, since the traffic goes in the opposite direction. It 
uses basically NSCA, but transports it over SSL and HTTPS so you can 
safely send it over the public Internet. That is at 
http://www.tntmonitoring.com And of course it uses the plugin collection 
I mentioned earlier.

arly arly wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> I am using nagios3 and I would like an monitoring system for my
> network. I have cca 10 hosts in "my network" but they are behind
> firewall.
> I mean in "my network" which is not exposed to outside world, some
> machines are behidn firewals in.
>
> Critical machines run Windows 2003 server OS, and I tried to use
> NSClient++, in combination with check_nrpe ( I tried both ports 5666
> and 12489 ) and I can get information from windows servers--checking
> them with check_nrpe looks ok.
>
> Then I realized that with SNMP I could better informations ( tested on
> machines directly accessible from nagios server ) and decided to
> copy/paste working SNMP configuration from windows machines and add
> necessary servers to nagios conf files and have all unified via SNMP
> monitoring. I am using *.pl scripts from
> http://nagios.manubulon.com/snmp_storage.html and for machines
> directly accessible all is ok
>
> But I got into troubles for servers behind firewall :) Ports 161/162 (
> UDP/TCP ) are open on firewal to windows servers
>
> When I run
> ./check_snmp_storage.pl -H AAA.AAA.AAA.AAA -C public -m ^C: -w 80 -c
> 90 ( AAA.AAA.AAA.AAA address of win. machine behind firewal ) I am
> getting an error
>
> ERROR: Description/Type table : No response from remote host 'AAA.AAA.AAA.AAA'.
> what means no return information from server. First I suspected on
> connectivity and I moved SNMP to listen on another port, run command
> ./check_snmp_storage.pl -H AAA.AAA.AAA.AAA -C public -m ^C: -w 80 -c
> 90 --port 2222
> but same issue ( this process works when I test it on machines which
> are not behind firewall )
> On windows machine netstat -a shows
>
>  UDP    server:snmp        *:*
>  UDP    server:snmptrap    *:*
>
> what means snmp is listenning ( same configuration of SNMP service
> works ok for machines which are in same net as nagios server )
>
> I am suspection it could something to do with SNMP client / SNMP
> protocol how it works, as I am getting correct response when I sent it
> to 5666 + check_nrpe.
>
> Any reasonable hint what I could check will very useful, so thank you
> in advance. I am preety lost I do not really know what to check more
> in order to resolve this.
>
> Operating system I use for nagios server is Debian stable 5, I am very
> sure configuration of SNMP on Windows servers is correct. HW I am want
> to monitor are HP Proliants DL360 G5, DL380 G5
>
> Kind regards,
>
> Arlytex
>
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