This section describes the Licensing settings that you can configure in provisioning packages for Windows 10 using Windows Configuration Designer. Mazenet Technologies is a comprehensive IT service provider of enterprise security solutions, offering a full range of Networking to support business infrastructure. Our 18+ years of expertise in storage optimization, cloud migration, and managed security services have aided the timely delivery of solutions by enhancing operational excellence.
The Windows Licensing Monitoring Service is a Win32 program that can be started by the Service Controller and that obeys the service control protocol. In Windows 8 it is starting automatically during the operating system startup.
Whats the 'BestPractice' to disable Notification for specific Devices for an specific Time for only one Time (Maintenance Window)
Poster creator app. We want to install Windows Updates and restart afterwards specific Devices at an specific Time (2am on the Weekend) and want to disable the Notification in this time for theses Devices.
Greetings
Votes:
Disable Windows Service Powershell
0
Your Vote:
This article applies to PRTG Network Monitor 12 or later, as well as partly to previous (deprecated) versions
PRTG has a setting Maintenance Window for groups, probes, devices, and sensors that allows you to pause an object's monitoring within a defined time span.
PRTG supports a schedule concept. Using schedules you can pause monitoring and/or notifications at specific days and hours throughout the week. During a pause, no notifications will be sent.
You can define several schedules with different time frames. To do so, enter the PRTG web interface and go to Setup | Account Settings | Schedules. Once defined, the schedules can be used in the settings of any notification defined (Setup | Account Settings | Notifications), as well as in the settings of groups, probes, devices, and sensors.
- If you want a scheduled pause for notifications of specific devices only, use a separate notification with an own schedule for these devices.
- Once a schedule is connected with a certain notification or monitoring object, you can also change this schedule's settings later on. This will then affect all notifications and objects connected with this schedule.
See Also
- Manual section Scheduling (and linked parts)
- Manual section Notifying (and linked parts)
The schedule does not appear to allow scheduling for a specific future date. E.g. one time on Saturday, Feb. 5th. Is there no provision to allow a one-time, specific outage period, after which the schedule returns to normal?
Thanks.
Sorry, currently, only re-occurring schedules can be defined.
Now that PRTG v9 has now been released, can you please confirm if PRTG is still unable to perform the simple task of a once-off maintenance window for a specific date?
I get notice emails from my various network providers advising they are doing maintenance in 2-3 weeks time for various links and currently I have to manually put a reminder into my calendar to set a 1-day-long pause in PRTG just to avoid PRTG-generated outage alerts (the windows are usually somewhere between midnight to 3am). This causes issues as it can miss legitimate outages that are now part of the maintenance window.
The ability to perform this once-off maintenance window for a specific date has been available in all other monitoring tools I have used over the last few years, and is sorely missed in PRTG.
Cheers,
In PRTG 9 you can define schedules like this:
Use the syntax ww:hh:mm-ww:hh:mm to define a start-end period when a sensor/notification should be inactive. 'ww' is a two letter shortcut for the weekday (Monday-Sunday: mo,tu,we,th,fr,sa,su). 'hh' and 'mm' define the hour (in 24 hour format, no AM/PM allowed) respectively the minute. So 'fr:17:00-mo:09:00' means a scheduled pause from Friday 17:00 (5:00pm) until Monday 9:00(am)
We will look into the option to also supply a specific date instead of a weekday, too.
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for your update. Am I correct in understanding that your suggestion above would result in a schedule (Friday 5pm to Monday 9am) that would re-occur *each week* ?
Re-occurrence of this maintenance window is what I, and the original poster technik, are trying to avoid.
If you could please look to add a specific date as you mention above, that would be most appreciated! For me personally, once the window for the specified date has passed, I would expect the maintenance window to be automatically removed/deleted so it doesnt clog up the list of normal schedules that may be applied to the device/group etc.
Thanks again for your help!
Probably an ever better method than not-re-occuring schedules would be the possibility to set a Sensor to Pause not only 'until' but also 'from' some specific date/time.
Wether via scheduling or via pause: Our Operations Teams would be very glad if you can provide a mechanism with which they can register a maintenance window several weeks ahead..
I'm just going to add another request for this feature. We have a one-time scheduled maintenance coming up in a few weeks, and it would be very convenient to be able to say 'Pause all sensors in this group on June 9, 12:00-8:00 a.m.'
The need to create a new recurring schedule, move the sensors to the new schedule the week before the work, and then move them back after the work is over is cumbersome at best.
We apply patches on the 2nd Friday night of every month. It would be helpful if we could create a schedule with that parameter. Currently we either need to exclude every Friday night, or change the schedules for the affected servers the day patches are installed.
Here's an example of what we're talking about. This is a request I just received:
'Can you please suspend monitoring on this Wednesday evening between 8 and 10 pm?
We need to free up some space on our development box and will have down during this period.'
I get requests like this frequently, and I haven't found an easy way to do this. The server in question already has a regular schedule associated with it. I need to edit the schedule, wait until Wedneday is over, and then change it back (and hope I don't forget!).
PRTG now has a setting 'Maintenance Window' for groups and devices that allows you to pause an object's monitoring between date1/time1 and date2/time2.
Awesome! Thanks! I'll definitely be using this feature. But I haven't been able to find where it is. Is the maintenance window setting available in version 12.4.6.3230 (which is our current version), or do I need to upgrade to the preview release? (12.4.6.3341?)
hello,
this is not yet available in the stable version, sorry. It will be available in the preview version next week and then it will take a little time before it is available in the stable version, sorry.
I have upgraded to PRTG 12.4.6.3385 [Preview], but I don't see the maintenance window setting. Can you help me find it? Or do I need to try a different version?
Hi,
the most recent Preview Version is 13.1.1.1161.
Please update to the mentioned version and you should be able to use the maintenance function.
Best regards
Hello,We are using release 13.4.7.3706+.
We have about 7,000 sensors set up and it would be a large amount of trouble to go back and configure maintenance schedules on them, especially since we do not always perform maintenance on a predictable schedule.
I would like to see a feature where we can still monitor the state of a sensor in the web interface, but prevent Alerts or Notifications being sent out via email or SMS.
This way, we could rapidly see when a host is fully ready to serve after a reboot (or detect that it has not fully restored) during a maintenance window - without alarms getting sent out. My understanding is that we cannot see the true state of a host while the sensor is in a paused (blue) state.
Of course, some sort of safety feature would also need to be built in so that it was clear when a sensor was in a 'monitoring but not alerting' state to prevent operator error.
Thank you,Kirk
If you wanted to monitor without notifications being sent, you can set up the notifications on a schedule so that during that time the notification would be disabled. If you used the same notifications for all the sensors affected, they would go into an alarm state but they would not send the notification.
If a 'One-Time Maintenance Window' has been set on a sensor, how can I check it? Also how can I clear it if it is no longer needed?
Martin, it's not possible to filter for objects that have a one-time-maintenance window set, in the moment. This is on the wish list.
Disabling the Maintenance Window can be done by just switching back to 'Not set' in the according option.
There is no Option 'Not Set' in the latest version, and by the way -please when a Maintenance Window is set, add a new Point in the Context Menu like 'Show existing Maintenance Windows', otherwise this function is useless, because if I made a mistake or will check if someone already set a Maintenance Window, I have no possibility to see existing or correct mistaken entries.
Cheers..
I would like to request functionality to schedule on a monthly basis. For example, every 3rd Thursday or every other Fri. Any chance this will be added in the future? Thanks!
Monthly Schedules are on the wishlist and please consider your request counted. An ETA or exact version has not been set though.
Any news on monthly schedules - it's a vital requirement for clients as most updates are run monthly.
Still only on the wishlist. Sorry.
Is this still on the wishlist? Monthly Schedules
Dear Conky
There are currently no plans to implement a month-based schedule. Only weekday-based schedules are possible.
We do see the request for month-based schedules, as well as for holiday support. However, this has deeper implications for the schedule manager. We are looking for other options instead, like an external manager of maintenance windows.
Hi,
I have scheduled a one-time maintenance window for a Group, as opposed to adding or adjusting a current schedule, however once I go to the group after the one-time maintenance window was configured I'm unable to view this maintenance window which was configured, is this maintenance window therefore configured?
Is there plans to enable functionality, allowing one to be able to view the configured/scheduled one-time maintenance windows?
Deon
Dear DeonG
I am sorry, there is no overview of one-time maintenance windows. Because with larger PRTG installation, managing maintenance windows is getting more important, we are exploring new options to manage maintenance windows.
hello,
are there any recent updates to share regarding scheduled, recurring maintenance windows?
Dear ariehm,
in the case the build-in options are not flexible enough, please have a look at this custom solution.
Please log in or register to enter your reply.
Good morning. I figured it was time for another post on Essentials. Some parts of this article also apply to Foundation edition.
Votes:
Disable Windows Service Powershell
0
Your Vote:
This article applies to PRTG Network Monitor 12 or later, as well as partly to previous (deprecated) versions
PRTG has a setting Maintenance Window for groups, probes, devices, and sensors that allows you to pause an object's monitoring within a defined time span.
PRTG supports a schedule concept. Using schedules you can pause monitoring and/or notifications at specific days and hours throughout the week. During a pause, no notifications will be sent.
You can define several schedules with different time frames. To do so, enter the PRTG web interface and go to Setup | Account Settings | Schedules. Once defined, the schedules can be used in the settings of any notification defined (Setup | Account Settings | Notifications), as well as in the settings of groups, probes, devices, and sensors.
- If you want a scheduled pause for notifications of specific devices only, use a separate notification with an own schedule for these devices.
- Once a schedule is connected with a certain notification or monitoring object, you can also change this schedule's settings later on. This will then affect all notifications and objects connected with this schedule.
See Also
- Manual section Scheduling (and linked parts)
- Manual section Notifying (and linked parts)
The schedule does not appear to allow scheduling for a specific future date. E.g. one time on Saturday, Feb. 5th. Is there no provision to allow a one-time, specific outage period, after which the schedule returns to normal?
Thanks.
Sorry, currently, only re-occurring schedules can be defined.
Now that PRTG v9 has now been released, can you please confirm if PRTG is still unable to perform the simple task of a once-off maintenance window for a specific date?
I get notice emails from my various network providers advising they are doing maintenance in 2-3 weeks time for various links and currently I have to manually put a reminder into my calendar to set a 1-day-long pause in PRTG just to avoid PRTG-generated outage alerts (the windows are usually somewhere between midnight to 3am). This causes issues as it can miss legitimate outages that are now part of the maintenance window.
The ability to perform this once-off maintenance window for a specific date has been available in all other monitoring tools I have used over the last few years, and is sorely missed in PRTG.
Cheers,
In PRTG 9 you can define schedules like this:
Use the syntax ww:hh:mm-ww:hh:mm to define a start-end period when a sensor/notification should be inactive. 'ww' is a two letter shortcut for the weekday (Monday-Sunday: mo,tu,we,th,fr,sa,su). 'hh' and 'mm' define the hour (in 24 hour format, no AM/PM allowed) respectively the minute. So 'fr:17:00-mo:09:00' means a scheduled pause from Friday 17:00 (5:00pm) until Monday 9:00(am)
We will look into the option to also supply a specific date instead of a weekday, too.
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for your update. Am I correct in understanding that your suggestion above would result in a schedule (Friday 5pm to Monday 9am) that would re-occur *each week* ?
Re-occurrence of this maintenance window is what I, and the original poster technik, are trying to avoid.
If you could please look to add a specific date as you mention above, that would be most appreciated! For me personally, once the window for the specified date has passed, I would expect the maintenance window to be automatically removed/deleted so it doesnt clog up the list of normal schedules that may be applied to the device/group etc.
Thanks again for your help!
Probably an ever better method than not-re-occuring schedules would be the possibility to set a Sensor to Pause not only 'until' but also 'from' some specific date/time.
Wether via scheduling or via pause: Our Operations Teams would be very glad if you can provide a mechanism with which they can register a maintenance window several weeks ahead..
I'm just going to add another request for this feature. We have a one-time scheduled maintenance coming up in a few weeks, and it would be very convenient to be able to say 'Pause all sensors in this group on June 9, 12:00-8:00 a.m.'
The need to create a new recurring schedule, move the sensors to the new schedule the week before the work, and then move them back after the work is over is cumbersome at best.
We apply patches on the 2nd Friday night of every month. It would be helpful if we could create a schedule with that parameter. Currently we either need to exclude every Friday night, or change the schedules for the affected servers the day patches are installed.
Here's an example of what we're talking about. This is a request I just received:
'Can you please suspend monitoring on this Wednesday evening between 8 and 10 pm?
We need to free up some space on our development box and will have down during this period.'
I get requests like this frequently, and I haven't found an easy way to do this. The server in question already has a regular schedule associated with it. I need to edit the schedule, wait until Wedneday is over, and then change it back (and hope I don't forget!).
PRTG now has a setting 'Maintenance Window' for groups and devices that allows you to pause an object's monitoring between date1/time1 and date2/time2.
Awesome! Thanks! I'll definitely be using this feature. But I haven't been able to find where it is. Is the maintenance window setting available in version 12.4.6.3230 (which is our current version), or do I need to upgrade to the preview release? (12.4.6.3341?)
hello,
this is not yet available in the stable version, sorry. It will be available in the preview version next week and then it will take a little time before it is available in the stable version, sorry.
I have upgraded to PRTG 12.4.6.3385 [Preview], but I don't see the maintenance window setting. Can you help me find it? Or do I need to try a different version?
Hi,
the most recent Preview Version is 13.1.1.1161.
Please update to the mentioned version and you should be able to use the maintenance function.
Best regards
Hello,We are using release 13.4.7.3706+.
We have about 7,000 sensors set up and it would be a large amount of trouble to go back and configure maintenance schedules on them, especially since we do not always perform maintenance on a predictable schedule.
I would like to see a feature where we can still monitor the state of a sensor in the web interface, but prevent Alerts or Notifications being sent out via email or SMS.
This way, we could rapidly see when a host is fully ready to serve after a reboot (or detect that it has not fully restored) during a maintenance window - without alarms getting sent out. My understanding is that we cannot see the true state of a host while the sensor is in a paused (blue) state.
Of course, some sort of safety feature would also need to be built in so that it was clear when a sensor was in a 'monitoring but not alerting' state to prevent operator error.
Thank you,Kirk
If you wanted to monitor without notifications being sent, you can set up the notifications on a schedule so that during that time the notification would be disabled. If you used the same notifications for all the sensors affected, they would go into an alarm state but they would not send the notification.
If a 'One-Time Maintenance Window' has been set on a sensor, how can I check it? Also how can I clear it if it is no longer needed?
Martin, it's not possible to filter for objects that have a one-time-maintenance window set, in the moment. This is on the wish list.
Disabling the Maintenance Window can be done by just switching back to 'Not set' in the according option.
There is no Option 'Not Set' in the latest version, and by the way -please when a Maintenance Window is set, add a new Point in the Context Menu like 'Show existing Maintenance Windows', otherwise this function is useless, because if I made a mistake or will check if someone already set a Maintenance Window, I have no possibility to see existing or correct mistaken entries.
Cheers..
I would like to request functionality to schedule on a monthly basis. For example, every 3rd Thursday or every other Fri. Any chance this will be added in the future? Thanks!
Monthly Schedules are on the wishlist and please consider your request counted. An ETA or exact version has not been set though.
Any news on monthly schedules - it's a vital requirement for clients as most updates are run monthly.
Still only on the wishlist. Sorry.
Is this still on the wishlist? Monthly Schedules
Dear Conky
There are currently no plans to implement a month-based schedule. Only weekday-based schedules are possible.
We do see the request for month-based schedules, as well as for holiday support. However, this has deeper implications for the schedule manager. We are looking for other options instead, like an external manager of maintenance windows.
Hi,
I have scheduled a one-time maintenance window for a Group, as opposed to adding or adjusting a current schedule, however once I go to the group after the one-time maintenance window was configured I'm unable to view this maintenance window which was configured, is this maintenance window therefore configured?
Is there plans to enable functionality, allowing one to be able to view the configured/scheduled one-time maintenance windows?
Deon
Dear DeonG
I am sorry, there is no overview of one-time maintenance windows. Because with larger PRTG installation, managing maintenance windows is getting more important, we are exploring new options to manage maintenance windows.
hello,
are there any recent updates to share regarding scheduled, recurring maintenance windows?
Dear ariehm,
in the case the build-in options are not flexible enough, please have a look at this custom solution.
Please log in or register to enter your reply.
Good morning. I figured it was time for another post on Essentials. Some parts of this article also apply to Foundation edition.
Let's start off with a little background on Essentials edition. Windows Server Essentials edition is designed for a small to medium sized business. It is a very good option for a small to medium sized business with less than 25 users/computers. Here are a few of the advantages to running Essentials.
- It is less expense than standard edition. Typically by $200-300.
- There are no additional CALs (Client Access Licenses) to purchase. Twenty five user CALs are included.
- Can be easily upgraded to standard edition with a single command.
- Client PC Backup is builtin. This feature automatically backs up client PCs to the server
- Anywhere access is available. This is a feature that was first introduced in SBS (Small Business Server) It allows a user to remotely access computers and file shares. It also allows the administrator to access the Dashboard from anywhere. Additionally the administrator can setup a SSTP (Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol) VPN (Virtual Private Network) via a wizard.
- Easy integration with Microsoft cloud solutions.
What's the catch? There is always a catch. Windows Essentials edition is no exception. Below are the limitations imposed by running Essentials.
- The Essentials server MUST be a domain controller.
- The Essentials server must hold all the FSMO (Flexible Single Master Operation) roles. If you want to learn more about the FSMO roles here is a good article.
- Only one domain is permitted in the forest where the Windows Essentials edition server resides.
- No forest/domain trusts are permitted.
- The Remote Desktop Session Host role feature is not supported and typically will not function.
So what if the server is not a domain controller or violates one of the rules above? This is where the Server Infrastructure License Service comes into play. This service regularly checks the server to verify it is not violating the EULA (End User License Agreement). If a violation is found the server will shutdown every 27.67 days (27 days, 16 hours). Why Microsoft chose 27.67 days, I have no idea. Before it shuts down though it will warn you. The events will show up in the Server Infrastructure Licensing log.
The next question is how do we fix these errors. I have seen three causes for this issue. Let's go over each one and how to fix it. After you believe you have fixed the issue, see the the next section for a way to confirm the issue is resolved.
- The first cause of this issue is also the most painful to fix. If the server is demoted, and put into a workgroup it will cause this issue. All checks will fail because the domain can no longer be contacted. Unfortunately the only fix is to reinstall Windows on the server.
- The second reason these errors might crop up is due to the check failing due to an issue with Active Directory. For instance, if the server is not advertising as a domain controller due a SYSVOL issue. If an Active Directory issue is suspected, the first place to start should be to run a dcdiag. Dcdiag will test the basic functionality and report any issues found. As stated above, if there are SYSVOL issues, then the server will likely fail the advertising test.
- The last reason I have seen on more than a few occasions is the following error:
Log Name: Microsoft-Windows-Server Infrastructure Licensing/Operational
Event ID: 2
Level: ErrorDescription:The Forest Trust Check in the Licensing component did not pass because error 0x80070008 occurred in function fe1 [YJBI].
Not enough storage is available to process this command.This error seems to indicate that we are low on hard drive space. However this is not the case. This error is actually referring to a special pool in memory (RAM, Random Access Memory) called the heap. The heap is a finite size, regardless of how much RAM is in the system. Normally Windows will not experience a heap exhaustion, that is where this special pool of memory is completely depleted. However, if a program or driver is leaking memory, then the pool will eventually run out. In case you are wondering what a memory leak is, it occurs when a program or driver allocates memory, but does not free it when complete.
So in essence this error is caused by a malfunctioning program or driver. The good news is that every time I have seen this issue in Essentials or Foundation it was caused by a printer driver. There are 2 ways to fix this problem. The first way is to simply restart the printer spooler service. Restarting the printer spooler service unloads the printer drivers and frees all memory associated with them. This will temporarily eliminate the issue. A scheduled task could then be created to automatically do this on a regular basis. The optimal solution though is to find the problem driver and either remove or update it.
So to this point we have covered some of the pros and cons of running Essentials, what happens when the EULA is violated, and some common causes for the Server Infrastructure Licensing service shutting down the server. The last item I wanted to cover is how to force a new compliance check from the Server Infrastructure Licensing service. This process works for both Essentials and Foundation edition. This is useful if you are seeing compliance check errors, have taken measures to correct them, and now want to test if the issue is resolved. It is surprisingly easy to force a compliance check. Only one PowerShell command is required. Ensure you run PowerShell as administrator when running this command.
Stop-Process -ProcessName silsvc -Force
Disable Windows Service Gpo
The above command forces the Server Infrastructure License service process to stop. The process will then immediately start again. The trick here is that the Server Infrastructure License does a compliance check every time it starts. You should see a compliance check within 2-3 minutes after the service stops.
Well, we covered a lot of ground with this post. If you have any questions, or any suggestions please add a comment below.
