Windows Configuration Monitor

The Windows Configuration Monitor collects System Information details from the monitored Windows system at its Scheduled Intervals.  It is like being able to run msinfo32 on a schedule and store the results.  It can notify you to additions, changes, or removals of details in the System Information.  By default, the Monitor is fine tuned to ignore frequently changing details like Available Physical Memory, and can be further customized by the ELM administrator.

Collected System Information details can be viewed under each Agent in the System Information container.  You can also filter details, display subsets of the details, compare details between systems or times, print reports, etc.

Collected data is stored in a directory named Configuration Monitor Data under the ELM Enterprise Manager install folder.  For each Agent monitored, there will be a system information file containing the most recently collected full configuration.  If the ELM Configuration Monitor has run more than once, then there will also be history files containing detail differences.

Note
Both the ELM Windows Configuration Monitor and msinfo32 will return an unreadable company name for msencode.dll on Windows 2003.  Below is a screenshot from msinfo32.

Note
The following msinfo32 categories have been purposefully removed from the ELM Configuration Monitor: System Summary.Software Environment.Print Jobs, System Summary.Software Environment.Network Connections, System Summary.Software Environment.Running Tasks and System Summary.Software Environment.Loaded Modules, Windows Error Reporting.

Windows Configuration Monitor Settings

•History Retention - Set the number of days, weeks or months to keep history.  Acceptable values are 1-1000.

•Exclude - Tells the Configuration Monitor to ignore attributes that change frequently.

Actions

•Warning 5596 - The Configuration Monitor Detected Item(s) Added.

•Warning 5597 - The Configuration Monitor Detected Item(s) Changed.

•Warning 5598 - The Configuration Monitor Detected Item(s) Removed.

Monitory Category

Displays the Monitoring Categories to which the Monitor item is assigned. Click to select or deselect Monitoring Categories. Click New to create or Properties to Edit Monitoring Categories.

Agents

Displays the Agents to which the Monitor item is assigned.  Click to select or deselect individual agents. Click New to deploy an agent or Properties to View/Edit an existing agent.

Schedule

Displays the Scheduled Interval and Scheduled Hours settings which control the frequency for the Monitor Item.

Scheduled Interval tab

Specify the interval at which the monitoring, polling or action is to occur. Depending on the Monitor Item type, Items can be scheduled in interval increments of Seconds, Minutes, Hours and Days. The Scheduled Interval is relative to the top of the hour or top of the minute. For example, if a Scheduled Interval is configured for 10 minutes, the Monitor Item will execute at hh:10:00, hh:20:00, hh:30:00, hh:40:00, hh:50:00, h1:00:00, etc. If a Scheduled Interval is configured for 15 seconds, the Monitor Item will execute at hh:00:15, hh:00:30, hh:00:45, hh:01:00, hh:01:15, etc.

Scheduled Hours tab

Select the days and/or hours this item is active. By default, the schedule is set to ON for all hours and all days. Mouse clicks toggle squares between ON and OFF. Clicking on an individual square will toggle the active schedule for that hour. Clicking on an hour at the top of the grid, or on a day of the week at the left of the grid will toggle the corresponding column or row. Keyboard equivalents are the arrow keys and the space bar.