VMGuru

A few weeks ago Erik published a article about monitoring the vCenter Server appliance with End-Point Operations Agent.vCenter Server appliance with End-Point Operations Agent. This article will be a follow up on the End-Point Operations Agent, how to monitor Windows services.

There are two ways in wich you can add Windows services to your vRealize Operations Manager. The first will be adding services manually, the second will inventory the services automatically. In both cases you will first need to install the End Point Operations Manager agent on the Windows OS.

The installation of the agent is pretty straight forward (especcially if you choose the installer with java embedded). During the installation you will be asked:

vRealize Operations Manager address, wich you can choose to enter either a DNS name or IPaddress
a user account with rights within Operations Manager
the certificate thumbprint. This one can be found in the admin console of Operations manager, shown in the picture below. You will want to use the second one in the SSL certificate.

Once the installation is done you can check the service by looking for the “End Point Operations Management Agent” service in the Windows services overview.

After a few minutes you should see the agent appear in your Operations console. You can find the agent by going to Enviroment Overview > Operating Systems > Operating Systems World > Windows

Now that the agent is available we can start adding services to monitor. First I will describe adding services manually.

Select the agent that you want to monitor
Click on the Actions menu
Go to **Monitor OS Object > Monitor Windows Service**
In the new window enter a Display name
Enter the service_name. You can find this name by opening the targeted service on your Windows machine, near the top of the service window you will find the service name.
Click OK and the service should now be visible under your agent.

This method of adding services can give you a certain level of control over what is monitored within your infrastructure. But it is tedious work when you have a lot of services to monitor. That is where the automatic method comes in to play and it is really easy to setup.

First go to the Windows machine that you want to setup
Go to the conf directory of the End Point agent (default c:\ep-agent\conf)
Open the agent.properties file with a text editor
At the bottom of the file add the following windows.services.discover=true
Save the file and reboot Windows (I tried the first time with only restarting the agent but this din’t seem enough)

After the reboot it can take some time, but eventually you should see a list of services similar to the screenshot below.

So now you got your services available in Operations Manager, what now?

Well let me give a quick example by building a simple dashboard with a scoreboard in it for a single service.

Head to the home / dashboard page of Operations Manager
Click on the actions menu and then on Create Dashboard
Give your dashboard a Name and if desired a Description
In the Widget List look for the Scoreboard and drag it to the right section (wich should be blank)
On the top of the widget click the edit widget / pencil icon
In the middle left you select adapter types > EP ops adapter
On the right of the object you select the service you want to monitor
All the way on the right expand Availability
Double click **Resource Availability**
Save the settings and then save the dashboard

Your dashboard should now hold only the scoreboard widget and with it one colored square. Depending on the service running or beeing stopped the color will change from green to red and vice versa.

As mentioned this is only a simple example of what you can do with service monitoring. Hopefully this article can provide you with the first steps in setting up your own service monitoring. If you want to know more read Erik’s article on monitoring vCenter with End-Point Operations Agent