Do you ever wonder why Spotlight throws an Access Denied or WMI error while monitoring a Windows server when your user account has all the permissions needed to access that server? You might encounter these errors on the Home page or even at the time of connection. The frustrating part is that even though you can connect via Remote Desktop and Ping the server, you still get those annoying errors!  Well, Spotlight actually runs various WMI commands to connect to your server and collect performance metrics for monitoring. These underlying commands are a common cause of these errors. Utilizing some simple commands, you can identify and address the root cause and be on your way to monitoring in no time!

Before we get into the details, let’s clarify the characteristics of these errors:

  • Errors would be consistent and not random.
  • Errors are received on the Home page of Spotlight, with the acronym ‘WMI’ followed by ‘Access Denied’ or ‘Invalid Class’ along with the WMI class name in the error message:

    • "Collection 'Open Sessions' failed: WMI query "Win32_ServerSession" failed: Access denied.[0x80041003]"
    • “WMI query Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory failed: Invalid class.
      [0x80041010] [Error Code: -2147217392].”
    • Errors are received when attempting to connect to the server, containing ‘Access Denied’ or ‘RPC’ within their messages:
      • "Windows host is in an unplanned outage: Access is denied (Exception from HRESULT: 0x8007005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)"
      • “Monitored Server - Windows Connection Failure: Cannot connect to windows host 'NNN.N": Access is denied. (Exception from HRESULT: 0x80070005 (E_ACCESSDENIED)' for Windows 2008 Servers”
      • "Windows (WMI) connection error: Error 800706BA: The RPC server is unavailable"

To find the root cause and rectify these errors, follow these simple steps:

  1. First confirm the login account used in Spotlight for the connection using these steps:
    1. On the Spotlight Home page, using the connection tree located on the left side of the page, right-click on Windows connection name that’s failing and select the Properties option.
    2. Under the Details tab take note of the login account used here. This account has two possible sources:
      1. A domain account was manually entered.
      2. The “Use Diagnostic Server Credentials” option was used. In this case, the user must login to the server where Spotlight Diagnostic Server is installed. Using the Services.msc console, confirm the account owner of ‘Spotlight Diagnostic Server’ services.
  2. Next, test WMI using the same credentials:
    1. Log into server where Spotlight Diagnostic Server is installed
    2. Open CMD window and modify the command below in order to enter your information:  wmic /node: <host name> /user: <domain>\<user name> path Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory
    3. Use the host name and user name retrieved from step 1 above in this command.  If error encountered had a specific WMI class name in the error message, then enter the class name as well in command.  Otherwise, use the sample ‘Win32_PerfRawData_PerfOS_Memory’ class mentioned above.
    4. Running this command should ask you for a password and then return data from host server.
    5. Most likely you’ll receive the same Spotlight error running this command.  Windows errors such as this one can be resolved by System Administrators of that server. Once you can run this WMI without encountering any errors, that’s an indication that Spotlight error will also rectify itself.

     

Our Deployment Guide includes a ‘Troubleshooting WMI’ section providing more details about these errors.

Interested in trying Spotlight on SQL Server Enterprise for yourself?  Download a free 30-day trial.  

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