Credentials for Accessing Remote Windows Computers

If the Collector is running as an account with rights to connect to the remote computers, no further credential modification is needed.

If the account the credentials for the Collector service do not have access rights to remote computers you want to monitor, you can explicitly provide the credentials belonging to a user with administrative rights on the computers to be queried. To do this, specify the following properties at the appropriate level (i.e. global, group, or resource level):

• wmi.user – Assign the username of an account with administrative rights on the computers to be queried to this property.
• wmi.pass – Assign the password of an account with administrative rights on the computers to be queried to this property.
• wmi.authType – Optionally, this property can be used to indicate the NTLM protocol version that should be used to authenticate to a remote WMI host. If this property is not set, it defaults to a value of “NTLMv1”. Specify “NTLMv2” for authentication via NTLM version 2. A value of “Kerberos” is also supported; if “Kerberos” is assigned you should use the ServerName or FQDN to add device, and start your Collector services using AD account credentials instead of Local System.

For more information on assigning properties, see Resource and Instance Properties.

It is possible to use a local nondomain account on a remote computer that is a domain member. This is not recommended, even if the account is in the Administrators group. Doing so will subject the WMI access to UAC filtering in Vista and later OS’s, limiting the data that can be collected. You may also trigger account lockout alerts.

Please note that remote perfmon collection is not supported when using SYSTEM accounts, regardless of pdh.user/pdh.pass property usage.