Windows Updates in Nagios

We’re currently using Nagios as our main monitoring system at the Department. There’s actually no need to change that (even though I tried SCOM 2012). Things that I’ve been missing in our current Nagios setup are notifications about Windows Updates. Well, honestly I haven’t even looked into that specific “problem” before now. That said, I decided to give it a try.

I started by doing some googling and found a nice solution which uses  NSClient++ (http://www.nsclient.org/nscp/) and a script (http://zeldor.biz/2012/02/icinganagios-check-windows-updates/) which checks for updates. I followed the steps with some minor changes:

• Installed NSClient++ on the Windows Server(s)
• Edited nsclient.ini (NSC.ini is for older versions):

[/modules]
NRPEServer = 1

[/settings/NRPE/server]
port=5667 (default port wouldn’t work for some reason)
command_timeout=90
allow_arguments=0
use_ssl=1
socket_timeout=90

[/settings/external scripts/scripts]
check_win_updates=cscript.exe //T:90 //NoLogo scripts\\check_windows_updates.wsf /w:1 /c:10

[/settings/default]
; ALLOWED HOSTS – A comaseparated list of allowed hosts. You can use netmasks (/ syntax) or * to create ranges.
allowed hosts = abcdef.abo.fi

 

• On server side:

commands.cfg:

define command {
    command_name    check_win_updates
    command_line    $USER1$/check_nrpe -H $HOSTADDRESS$ -p 5667 -c check_win_updates -t 120
}

services.cfg:

define service {
    hostgroup_name               check-win-updates
    service_description            Windows Updates
    check_command               check_win_updates
    use                                     generic-service
    check_interval                  2880
}

host-groups.cfg:

define hostgroup {
    hostgroup_name          check-win-updates
    alias                           Windows Updates
    members                 server1,server2 (Lets call the servers server1 and server2 in this example)
}

 

Play around with the timers ( –t) and see what suit your needs. If you want to check other stuff as well (harddisk space, cpu usage and so on) you have to configure a bit more.

Examples:
http://nagios.sourceforge.net/docs/3_0/monitoring-windows.html
http://awaseroot.wordpress.com/2012/11/23/monitoring-windows-with-nagios/

In our case it was enough with Windows Updates checking however.

Here’s a screenshot (Fig 1) from nagstamon running on my Windows 8 client:

Fig 1. nagstamon

There’s currently no information about Windows Updates as all our servers were already updated before the screenshot 🙂 The other information is from different linux servers and printers. Here’s another screenshot (fig 2) from the Nagios web interface:

Fig 2. Host information/status detail for host in Nagios

Here you can see that the Windows Update check is running and that no updates are waiting or installing.

So, there you have it – Windows Updates in Nagios.