Windows OS Service 'Alert if service is not installed', logic behind the alert

[sivart_89]

Per the doc below starting with OA version 1.257 you can 'Alert if service is not installed: whether you want to receive alerts about OS services that are not installed on the host.'

Does anyone know the logic behind how this occurs? Specifically for Windows servers. Does dynatrace look for a registry key of some sort?

https://www.dynatrace.com/support/help/platform-modules/infrastructure-monitoring/hosts/monitoring/o...

[radek_jasinski]

Hi @sivart_89 

See point 4. in the documentation link you provided.
If you define which services you want to monitor, you will receive an alert if it disappears:)

Radek

[sivart_89]

@radek_jasinski What does that even mean? How does Dynatrace deem the service "disappearing"? We've had an issue occurred that could have been caught earlier had there been some sort of monitoring around alerting if a specific windows OS service is not installed on a host. I'm trying to understand if setting up this alert would have caught the issue, rather then setting it up, hoping it does meet our needs and revisiting things when the issue occurs again.

Knowing exactly how Dynatrace detects the service as not installed would be great to know.

[mrc15816]

based on how the oneagent works I don't think it is not looking into a registry to see if the service is installed or not. I assume the backend system/cluster is the one that would be triggering an alert if that radio button is turned on using the metrics it received. We are eying on this new update but we have few conditions that would prevent us from using as we have application running in cloud where it would cause chaos.

[jeffrey_cather]

If a service is not installed then when you get the list of available services from the OS it will not list the name of the service.  When you install an application that has associated services it gets added to the service list (services.msc).

If you try to monitor a service and it is not installed on a host then by default Dyantrace will not throw a problem event for that host.  However the 'Alert if service is not installed' is useful to inform you of hosts that do not have the service installed.  For instance if a required security tool is not installed you can be informed of which systems are missing the service.

Or at least that is the way I understand it.

Thanks,

Cole Cather