In any organization, Windows services are a core component of business-facing applications. The effective functioning of these Windows services is essential to prevent network and application downtime. This makes Windows service monitoring a critical part of any network management strategy.
Windows service monitoring enables you to ensure the availability of critical Windows services, therefore ensuring optimal network performance. It also allows you to automate actions or send alerts when services fail or disrupt critical applications. Windows services monitoring help you foresee performance anomalies and take necessary actions to effectively manage the network infrastructure.
A Windows application is not a single component but a combination of multiple functional Windows services. These applications are reliant on services, and services are reliant on other services for their smooth execution. The dependent Windows services may run on the same device or different devices.
Given this, when a Windows service turns dormant or experiences performance anomalies, it impacts its other dependent Windows services, bringing them all to halt. This disturbs the performance of the Windows applications depending on them, thereby affecting the overall network performance. So, identifying interdependent services and proactively monitoring them is essential to prevent latency and downtime.
Solution: To identify dependent services and map the applications and devices they impact, you can utilize the matrix model. This can be done in three simple steps:
Using this model, you can also map dependent Windows applications and devices to analyze potential outages and prevent them.
A malfunction in a Windows application due to a service failure slows down the application’s performance and impairs network health. This leads to the accumulation of junk data and increased queue length, which eventually causes the CPU temperature to spike or damages the other hardware components of one or more dependent devices. Simply put, a Windows service failure can cause device failure or downtime.
In such cases, you need to have a larger perspective on service-level topography. Lack of topographical visibility can affect Windows service monitoring by creating narrowed, isolated views, preventing you from seeing the bigger picture. This can ultimately lead to poor fault management practices and prolonged network restoration time in the event of downtime.
Solution: The obvious solution here is visualization. Business-level visualization helps you gain visibility into Windows-service-level topography by grouping networks according to the desired business operations. When you group services, you'll get a clear view of the dependent Windows services and applications that will fail if a Windows service fails. This way, you can anticipate dependents' failures and take precautionary measures to prevent them, which will prevent network outages, too.
In a hybrid network infrastructure, not all Windows services require monitoring all the time. Frequent polling might increase the workload for the monitoring tool in some cases, whereas infrequent monitoring might cause server outages in other cases. In other words, some crucial Windows services need to be monitored more often and some trivial services can be monitored less frequently. Different Windows services require different polling intervals depending on the Windows applications and the corresponding factors they affect.
Prioritizing which Windows services to monitor by analyzing the consequences and determining the right polling interval can be hard. The decision should be made after considering each service's dependent factors, including services, applications, processes, and devices. Performing this analysis for numerous Windows services in a network is an arduous task.
Solution: Leverage data growth trends by studying historical data such as user behavior, data usage patterns, and business trends. The most efficient way to do this is by analyzing reports related to Windows service health and performance. You can also schedule reports to stay informed about data patterns on a regular basis, and make a call on polling frequency.
Out of all the Windows applications running on network servers, some contribute to the critical functioning of business operations. The health of those applications is crucial and is determined by the health of their dependent Windows services. When a service responsible for running those crucial applications fails, the corresponding applications will also fail, leading to performance anomalies or downtime.
In cases like these, not resolving outages immediately will affect overall network performance, putting entire business functions at risk. For the on-field team to be notified about these situations in time to prevent business losses, instant issue detection and resolution is the need of the hour.
Solution: To deal with these critical situations, we recommend an out-of-the-box integration system with an ITSM tool that can provide the on-field team with detailed tickets that contain extensive data related to the Windows service failure and its dependent details. These tickets can be delivered to the on-field team soon after an issue occurs to resolve outages and minimize downtime.
Any Windows application that a business uses has certain functionalities to solve specific business problems, and those functionalities are complemented by a server's default or traditional Windows services. But still, some other server functionalities can be leveraged with the help of custom Windows services.
Besides performing their uniquely defined goals, custom services also interact with traditional Windows services and other network devices, so they also impact global uptime and network performance. Prioritizing the right custom services and traditional services to monitor can be a challenging task.
Solution: The solution here is to choose a tool that supports proactive monitoring of custom services. The tool should be able to monitor both traditional and custom Windows services and display the interaction between them. This way, you can find services that contribute to global network availability and keep them in check.
To wrap up, we suggest that you use a versatile tool that can help you overcome these challenges in Windows service monitoring by automating the solutions discussed or reducing the manual intervention required to perform them. One such tool is ManageEngine's OpManager!
OpManager's Windows service monitoring feature monitors the availability of Windows services and generates extensive reports on them. Its Windows service monitoring tool notifies faults instantly and helps accelerate troubleshooting processes to minimize downtime. The tool also saves network admins from the fuss of manual troubleshooting by automating certain workflows. OpManager's visualization capabilities help you see the bigger picture of service topography and prevent potential service dormancy, ensuring ideal network health.
Did we mention that OpManager's Windows service monitor supports a wide range of services like DNS servers, DHCP servers, MySQL, Telnet, Event Logs, Microsoft Internet Information Services, Internet Authentication Service, RPC, and FTP?
Learn more about OpManager's Windows services monitoring here.
Still not convinced? Download a free, 30-day trial to explore OpManager on your own, or register for a free, personalized demo to understand why OpManager is the one-stop solution for not only Windows service monitoring but all your network monitoring needs.
