Overview

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.

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To collect WMI data NMIS has to use a WMI access tool. At 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/.

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If the node in question requires a windows domain prefix for the WMI access, then In NMIS 8 prepend that to the wmiusername followed by a "/", e.g. "somedomain/theuser". 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:

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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

The wmic client will accept a user in the following format: 

• domain/username
• username@domain
• username

In the inside, NMIS calls the windows wmic client using the following parameters:

/usr/local/nmis8/bin/wmic --delimiter=rvqbfzsfzd -A /tmp/authfile //HOST_IP "select * from win32_operatingsystem"

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

username = user
password = name

We should not expect the same data as the one collect by SNMP. WMI can work without snmp, but WMI data structure is different. We should probably expect data in the interfaces, system and systemHealth sections.

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

Let's examine an example model:

'system' => {
  ...lots of stuff...
  'sys' => {
    'standard' => {
      'snmp' => {
      ....lots of stuff...
      },
      'wmi' => {
        'bios' => {
          title  => "Bios Name",
          query => 'select name from win32_bios',
          field => "Name",
          calculate => '$r =~ s/\s*$//; return $r;',
        },
        # if we want to type less, we can set a shared query - not required, though!
        "-common-" => {
          query => 'select * from win32_pagefileusage'
        },
        'totalswap' => {
          title => "total swap in bytes",
          query => 'select allocatedbasesize from Win32_pagefileusage',
          field => 'AllocatedBaseSize',
          calculate => 'return $r*(1<<20);',
        },

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• It is not possible for a systemHealth section to have both snmp and  wmi sections.
  This is because only one index per systemHealth section is supported, but wmi and snmp can not share that single index.
• At this time, collection of the following types of statistics from WMI is not supported:
  Network Interfaces
  Environment Data
  CBQoS Data
  Calls
  Server-type processor and load information

that for systemhealth stuff, BOTH sys and rrd sections must include indexed => actual field name, not just 'true'

that one systemhealth section can only have snmp or wmi, because one index governs the whole section

inefficiencies, queries are not rewritten to select only specific fields

inefficiencies, queries are also not rewritten when an indexed table row is fetched, so the whole table will be refetched

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• NMIS does not yet support service tests for WMI-sourced process information.
• Collection of indexed WMI sections is not optimised for maximum efficiency yet.
  query results are reused to some extent but not universally, and further optimisations are planned.
• The GUI model editor does not support editing of WMI sections yet.