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Microsoft Message Queue Agentless Monitoring

Requires Opsview Cloud or Opsview Monitor 6.7
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Microsoft Message Queue Agentless Opspack

MSMQ (Microsoft Message Queue) is a component of the Windows operating system that provides message queuing services. MSMQ enables applications running at different times to communicate across heterogeneous networks and systems that may be temporarily offline. Applications send messages to queues and read messages from queues.

What You Can Monitor

This Opspack allows you to monitor the performance and status of your Microsoft Message Queues. This Opspack includes service checks for the message rates, queue statistics and sessions.

Service Checks

Service Check Description
Message Rates Shows the number of incoming and outgoing messages in all queues
Queues Statistics Shows the total number of bytes and messages in all active queues
Sessions Shows the total number of open network sessions. A session is opened whenever a message is to be sent or received

Prerequisites

  • Ensure your Opsview Monitor version is at least 6.7.0. Check Opsview Release Notes for the latest version of Opsview Monitor.
  • To use this Opspack, your Windows host must first be configured for Powershell Agentless Monitoring.

Setup Windows Host for Monitoring

By default, Windows hosts will not allow remote PowerShell scripts to run, which is required for Opsview Agentless Monitoring plugins to work.

This can be configured manually by the Windows Host administrator, or automatically using our recommended approach by running the ConfigureRemoting.ps1 Powershell script on the Windows Host.

Powershell Agentless Monitoring requires at least version 5.0 of Powershell. Check the Powershell version on your Windows Host by running:

$PSVersionTable.PSVersion

Run the ConfigureRemoting.ps1 script with Administrator privileges using a Powershell terminal. This will configure firewall rules, self-signed SSL certificates and authentication for PowerShell remoting.

Check this has been configured properly by running:

winrm quickconfig

You should get the following output:

WinRM service is already running on this machine.
WinRM is already set up for remote management on this computer.

By default port 5985 must be opened from the Opsview monitoring server to the Windows host you wish to check. WinRM utilises the HTTP/HTTPS protocol and can be configured to use certificates to secure the data in transit.

Ensure the service is listening by running:

For HTTP: netstat -an | findstr 5985

For HTTPS: netstat -an | findstr 5986

When using basic authentication with WinRM, the following commands must also be run on the windows host:

winrm set winrm/config/service/auth '@{Basic="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/service '@{AllowUnencrypted="true"}'
winrm set winrm/config/client/auth '@{Basic="true"}'

If you receive a 500 error, which is a known issue on Windows Server 2016, you may need to install WinRM-IIS-Ext. You can do so by running the following command:

Add-WindowsFeature winrm-IIS-Ext

Setup and Configuration

To configure and utilise this Opspack, you need to add the 'Application - Microsoft - Message Queue Agentless' Opspack to your Opsview Monitor system.

Note: It is recommended for the 'OS - Windows Base Agentless' Opspack to also be installed in your Opsview Monitor system

Step 1: Import the Opspack

Download the application-microsoft-message-queue-agentless.opspack file from the Releases section of this repository.

Navigate to Host Template Settings inside Opsview Monitor and select Import Opspack in the top right corner.

Then click Browse and select the application-microsoft-message-queue-agentless.opspack file. Click Upload and then click Import when the file is uploaded.

For more information, refer to Opsview Knowledge Center - Importing Opspacks

Step 2: Add the Host Template

Add the Application - Microsoft Message Queue Agentless Host Template to your Opsview Monitor host.

For more information, refer to Opsview Knowledge Center - Adding Host Templates to Hosts.

Step 3: Add and configure variables required for this host

Variable Description
WINRM_TRANSPORT Used for authenticating with the remote host. The Value is the Authentication Transport Type - must be one of: Basic, Certificate, Kerberos or NTLM. NOTE: CredSSP is not supported. Override the Username and Password with the credentials to be used for authentication with the remote host. Scheme can be overridden to make the check use HTTP (defaults to https). Extra arguments can be used to pass extra arguments to check_by_winrm.py
KERBEROS_REALM Only required if authenticating using Kerberos. The Value is the Kerberos realm.

For more information, refer to Opsview Knowledge Center - Adding Variables to Hosts.

Step 4: Apply changes and the system will now be monitored

Microsoft Message Queue Agentless Service Checks