02. 04. 2026
NetEye, Unified Monitoring
30. 06. 2021
Enrico Alberti
Icinga Web 2, NetEye
Monitoring Windows Systems through Icinga Powershell Plugins
During migrations from NetEye 3 to NetEye 4, I often run into really outdated monitoring checks in the Windows world, where the last update was more than 10 years ago… and whose logic is therefore now completely obsolete!
The time for change is now!!!
In the last year Icinga released a really interesting project that provides a wide range of check plugins for the new Icinga 2 Agent on Windows Systems: the Icinga Powershell Plugins.
All these plugins require the Icinga PowerShell Framework as a core framework for executing checks and providing Icinga formatted output. This PowerShell module will allow plugins to fetch data from Windows hosts and use them for inventory and monitoring solutions. Together with the Icinga Web 2 module, a detailed overview of Windows infrastructure is then provided.
The available plugins in the latest release (1.5.0) will include:
- Invoke-IcingaCheckBiosSerial
- Invoke-IcingaCheckCertificate
- Invoke-IcingaCheckCheckSum
- Invoke-IcingaCheckCPU
- Invoke-IcingaCheckDirectory
- Invoke-IcingaCheckDiskHealth
- Invoke-IcingaCheckEventlog
- Invoke-IcingaCheckFirewall
- Invoke-IcingaCheckHTTPStatus
- Invoke-IcingaCheckICMP
- Invoke-IcingaCheckMemory
- Invoke-IcingaCheckMPIO
- Invoke-IcingaCheckNetworkInterface
- Invoke-IcingaCheckNLA
- Invoke-IcingaCheckPerfcounter
- Invoke-IcingaCheckProcessCount
- Invoke-IcingaCheckScheduledTask
- Invoke-IcingaCheckService
- Invoke-IcingaCheckStoragePool
- Invoke-IcingaCheckTCP
- Invoke-IcingaCheckTimeSync
- Invoke-IcingaCheckUNCPath
- Invoke-IcingaCheckUpdates
- Invoke-IcingaCheckUptime
- Invoke-IcingaCheckUsedPartitionSpace
- Invoke-IcingaCheckUsers
A basic example?
GOAL: monitoring a Windows folder: file count, size of files, and age
Before:
- We could use 2 different check plugins from Nagios world (check_file_count, check_file_age), with all the limitations about change younger than, or we could need to install
NSClient++viacheck_nrpe. - We need to create the Service Template and Command definitions under Director
Now:
- Single check with IcingaCheckDirectory
- The Command definitions can be automatically imported from a Basket provided by Icinga
Configuration on Windows Host
First of all, we need to install the icinga-powershell-plugins from PowerShell Gallery (instructions can be found at the Icinga Git project)
TIPS:
- For some checks, older versions of PowerShell not work correctly. We suggest installing/updating PowerShell 5.1 on Windows hosts. For Windows Server 2008 R2 (end-of-support) we suggest following this guide: https://www.rootusers.com/install-powershell-5-windows-server-2008-r2/
- If you have set the restriction policy on your system, please enable the RemoteSigned for LocalMachine scope.
Using the Get-IcingaCheckCommandConfig command we can export the configuration basket.
Get-IcingaCheckCommandConfig -CheckName Invoke-IcingaCheckDirectory -OutDirectory 'C:\Users\myuser\Documents\'
Configuration on NetEye Director
Now you can navigate to your Icinga Director Basket menu and import the generated file. Afterwards all specified check commands will be available and ready to use.
After that we can create the related Service Template and add the monitoring service on the host.
This check monitors that in a Windows folder (path) there are files (filtered by the FileNames field) that match specified criteria (size, creation, change). These checks can also be recursive on the sub-folder (with the recurse flag).
That’s all! You can add as many checks on files and directories as you want. The checks that you can do with this command are very useful, below is an example of what we implemented on our NetEye Demo Online.
References:
Enrico Alberti
I’ve always been fascinated by the IT world, especially by the security environment and its architectures.
The common thread in my working experience is the creation of helpful open-source solutions to easily manage the huge amount of security information.
In the past years, my work was especially focused on Cyber Kill Chain, parsing and ELK Stack but in order to start from the beginning...
In 2010 I left my birthplace, the lovely Veneto, looking for a new ´cyber´ adventure in Milan. After graduating in Computer Systems and Networks Security, I worked for 6 years as a Cyber Security Consultant.
During the first 5 years, I explored the deep and manifold world of cybersecurity, becoming passionate about open source solutions. After that, I decided to challenge myself joining a Start-up company focusing on SOC services (I’m a proud member of the Blue Team!).
In Wuerth IT Italy, I would like to personalize the NetEye System for each one of our customers, in order to develop the perfect product for their needs, by combining all my past experiences and skills.
Author
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