Monitoring modems with OpsMgr 2007

In this short post, I'll explain one of the techniques to monitor whether a modem is listening for incoming calls on a machine, using Operations Manager 2007. Assuming that you may have some modems that get turned on when someone needs to dial in (for whatever reason), and *should* be disconnected afterwards. So you would like to get alerted when a modem is turned on and RRAS is configured to put the modem in listening mode.

This is how it works :

Create a Unit monitor – Scripting - Two state monitor

Target Windows Operating System. Keep the monitor disabled for now. Save the monitor in a custom management pack.

Schedule : run every 15 minutes or so

Script : choose a good name for the script (e.g. checkifmodemison.vbs) and set the timeout (1 minute should be ok)

Option Explicit

'

' Script that runs an external tool and tries to

' determine if a modem is turned on and listening or not

' Written by Peter Van Eeckhoutte

' https://petersblog.dyndns.org:8899

' peter.ve@telenet.be

' Feb 2008

' version 1.0

'

Dim oArgs

Set oArgs = Wscript.Arguments

Dim oAPI

Dim objShell

Dim objScriptExec    

Dim oBag

Dim modemturnedon

modemturnedon="false"

Set oAPI = CreateObject("MOM.ScriptAPI")

'get args

If oArgs.Count < 2 Then

' If the script is called without the required arguments,

' create an information event and then quit.

Call oAPI.LogScriptEvent(Wscript.ScriptName,101,2,Wscript.ScriptName + " script was called without the necessary 2 arguments (<path to getmodemstatus.exe> <comport> and was not executed.")

Wscript.Quit -1

End If

Call oAPI.LogScriptEvent(Wscript.ScriptName,101,0,Wscript.ScriptName+" script was launched with " + Cstr(oArgs.Count) + " arguments.")

'launch getmodemstatus

Set objShell = CreateObject("WScript.Shell")

Set objScriptExec = objShell.Exec(oArgs(0)+" "+oArgs(1))

modemturnedon= trim(objScriptExec.StdOut.ReadLine)

Set oBag = oAPI.CreatePropertyBag()

Call oBag.AddValue("ModemTurnedOn",modemturnedon)

Call oAPI.LogScriptEvent(WScript.ScriptName,101,0,WScript.ScriptName+" script completed successfully. ModemTurnedOn : "+modemturnedon)

Call oAPI.Return(oBag)

You can download the latest copy of the script from here : [download#5#image]
[download#5#size]

Leave the parameters field empty for now.

Unhealthy expression :

Healthy expression :

Set the monitor health states

Set alerting properties

Save the monitor

On every host that needs to be monitored, you need to put a small executable : getmodemstatus.exe

Download from here
[download id="7"]

Create an override for the monitor, and select the server that needs to be monitored.

Enable the monitor and set the parameters as follows :

"<path to getmodemstatus.exe>" "comport where the modem is connected to"

Save the override. Wait until the management pack gets distributed and the script kicks in.

You should see the following 2 events when the script runs :

If the modem is turned on, the second event will show this in the description :

If everything has been set up, you should now get an alert in OpsMgr

If the modem is turned off again and RRAS does no longer grab the comport , the alert will be resolved (if that is how you've set up the alerting properties)

Enjoy !