Monitor a Windows Server using SNMP

Solution 1:

Use snmpwalk to see what the machine is reporting, and pick what looks appropriate :-)

For CPU utilization, the Host Resources MIB provides a SNMP Table at 1.3.6.1.2.1.25.3.3 which lists each CPU and it's current percent utilization, but these values can be somewhat misleading (100% doesn't always mean your system is overloaded).

www.oidview.com is a good place to go MIB-browsing, and will give you the MIB entity name as well as the OID.

Solution 2:

There isn't any OID for 'performance usage', you will need to do your own investigation and determine what you want to capture - a lot of stuff from the HOSTS MIB (CPU, RAM, disk space) are common, but you may also care about specific things that are hardware-specific (vendor-specific RAID card for example.)

What tool are you using? Nagios, OpenNMS, and MRTG have templates for common scenarios.

Also, keep in mind that if you're using SNMP v2, your community strings are cleartext.

Solution 3:

You can use Cacti, on Linux or Windows, to manage snmp data & graph. It will discover oid by itself (using preloaded templates) and generate graphes for you (daily / monthly...) It's open source

Solution 4:

You might consider using getif.exe or a mib browser to see what the machine is exposing.

The oid for generic processor info from one of the RFC mibs is:

.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.3.3.1

but you'll need to drill in to determine multiprocessor. On one of my single processor servers the oid is:

.1.3.6.1.2.1.25.3.3.1.2.1

YMMV.

An excellent source of snmp info is:

http://www.wtcs.org/snmp4tpc/testing.htm

As mentioned elsewhere, once you get the data, MRTG, Cacti, Nagios (et al) are great ways to show historical information, and to get a picture of the server health of your network.

Rob