Basic WMI Testing

We’ve been looking at new network and server monitoring tools. We had been using SNMP R/O but are looking to be able to monitor services so most tools move to WMI. WMI looks to be a pain to configure on a large scale if you don’t want to make the service account a local or domain admin 🙁

I found an easy way to test if the issue with WMI is permissions or not. This technet blog has a few ways to test.

Testing the WMI Service on a Remote Machine

The process to perform a quick test of the WMI services on a remote machine is not much different than testing the local services.

1. Click Start, click Run, type wmimgmt.msc, and then click OK.
2. Right-click WMI Control (Local), and then click Connect to another computer.
3. Click Another computer, and then enter the name of the remote computer.
4. If you have to provide user credentials, click Change.
5. Click OK.
6. Right-click WMI Control (remote system name), and then click Properties.

I still haven’t found a way to make a service account work with remote WMI if its not an admin, but atleast I have an easy way to test and know its no the monitoring software not working.