Windows computer system sensor

The Windows computer system sensor discovers computer systems running Microsoft Windows operating systems.

Sensor name that is used in the GUI and logs

WindowsComputerSystemSensor

Prerequisites

For discovery using a gateway, the gateway must be accessible through SSH.
To discover Windows systems without using a gateway:
  • The Windows systems must be accessible through SSH.
  • Microsoft .NET Framework must be installed on Windows target systems. For more information, see Configuring for discovery of Windows systems.
  • Windows Scripting Host (WSH) 5.6 or higher must be installed on the target Windows systems. Windows Scripting Host is installed with Internet Explorer 6 Service Pack 1 or higher.
  • Windows Server 2016
    For TADDM 7.3.0.3, due to a Powershell 5 issue, you must contact your IBM Support representative and request that a Powershell 5 eFix be applied, before attempting the discovery of a Windows Server 2016 without a gateway. Once this has been done, discovery of the Windows 2016 server via direct SSH will function normally.

Limitations

  • If you provide user credentials without the administrator role, the Windows computer system sensor is not able to collect the list of services and devices that are related to Windows Server 2003. In result, the related tables in Data Management Portal are empty.
  • All computer system sensors and the SNMP MIB2 sensor ignore network interfaces that are configured to be down. TADDM does not populate the net.IpNetwork attribute on the following types of IP interfaces:
    • loopback, for example, 127.0.0.1, 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1
    • link-local, for example, 169.254.1.1, FE80:0:0:0:0:0:0:1
    • multicast, for example, 224.0.0.1, FF00:0:0:0:0:0:0:1
    • unspecified, for example, 0.0.0.0, 0:0:0:0:0:0:0:0
    Therefore, IP networks are not populated in the TADDM user interface.

Discovery of IPv6 interfaces and IPv6 routing and forwarding information

The sensor discovers IPv6 interfaces and IPv6 routing and forwarding information about target systems that are configured to support IPv6. TADDM runs discoveries against only IPv4 addresses. TADDM does not start a sensor against IPv6 addresses. For DNS lookups, TADDM uses either the IPv4 or the IPv6 addresses. TADDM does not populate the net.IpNetwork attribute on an IPv6 interface if the prefix length value is unspecified or equals zero.

The discovered IPv6 addresses are displayed in the TADDM user interface similarly to IPv4 addresses and are accessible using the TADDM API. Because IPv6 addresses use a prefix length value instead of an IPv4 netmask, only one of these values is populated for an IP address. The value depends on the address type.

Discovery of CPU information

The NumCPUs attribute value is set to the number of logical CPUs on the computer system. If hyperthreading is enabled on the Windows target system, the NumCPUs attribute also includes the hyperthreads. For example, on dual core system with hyperthreading enabled, the value of the NumCPUs attribute is 4. If hyperthreading is not enabled, the value of the NumCPUs attribute is 2.