monitor windows server - running behind firewall using WMI

Question

I'm havingg 100 windows machines which is running behind the firewall. But my monitoring server is running outside the network [ public].

For SNMP , I can put one proxy server inside the internal network and enable only simple and single NAT rule in firewall. Then I would be able to monitor all the 100 windows machine using SNMP.

But How can I do the same for WMI . Is there any option available out instead of allowing multiple rule in firewall ?. Since there is no guarantee that only we will be having 100 machines. the count may be get double in future. Any proxy application available to achieve this?

Answer 1

There are different ways to monitor hosts behind firewall using nagios. For example:

1. Using check_by_ssh plugin: You will need a linux box accessible from internet with ssh and which is also connected to the internal LAN. Then using this machine and check_by_ssh plugin you can run almost any check_command on the internal hosts remotely.
2. Using passive checks.
3. Distributed Monitoring: Also I can think of having a local nagios server in the LAN configured with all checkes and replicate it regularly to the public Nagios server.

There are plenty of online tutorials available, if you need help.

Answer 2

I am not sure if it works with the latest windows servers but you could give a try for wmi proxy monitoring.

Below link is the knowledge base of Groundwork monitor which embeds nagios which the monitoring method also can be used for bare nagios.

https://kb.groundworkopensource.com/display/DOC67/WMI+Agentless+Plugins+Project

Thing is you build one windows proxy machine accessible from nagios server. Every wmi check will be routed via this windows proxy server to your destination server.