Version

All

Date

13 Feb 2009

Summary

A customer gets alerts from a Windows API check against a server even though it responds OK to a ping command.

Technical Background

When using the option for Use Windows NetRemoteTOD API in the System Down and SLA Rules, this prompts the monitored server to respond to the Net Time command with the server name and time of day.

Since a Ping command only checks the NIC response, it is possible a server could respond successfully to a Ping without being able to respond to a Net Time API call.

For example, a server that is experiencing operating system issues (such as slow response or a blue screen) might respond OK to a Ping check, but would fail to respond to the Net Time API check.

Resolution

Customers can test the same Windows NetRemoteTOD API check that Argent uses by running the following from the command line against the monitored server:

   net time \\servername

The resulting command line response will help to determine what issue the monitored server is having, such as having a duplicated server name in the same network, or the operating system not responding, etc.