Enabling SNMP on a Windows machine

Despite the fact, that Microsoft depreciated SNMP for the Windows Server 2012 onwards, it is sometimes necessary to enable SNMP in this system. Below you will find a simple walkthrough how to do it.

Quick overview

Installation of the SNMP service on machines with various versions of Windows Server follows a similar route:

  1. You have to enable this feature in the Server Manager directly in Windows OS
  2. You need to configure SNMP, adjusting e.g. security parameters

This short article covers enabling SNMP on machines with Windows Server 2019 - however, it applies to all Windows Server versions currently supported by Microsoft, such as:

Installation of the service

Installation of the SNMP Service with Server Manager is pretty straightforward because the wizard guides you through the whole process. In short - it goes like this:

  1. Choose feature-based installation and desired server where you want to enable SNMP,
  2. Select 'File and Storage Services' and SNMP Service,
  3. Click on 'Add Feature', click 'Next' then 'Install'.

After installation is finished, a confirmation screen should be displayed:

Server Manager

Configuring the service

Now, having the SNMP service installed, it is time to configure it properly. Do the following:

  1. Run services.msc from Windows Administrative Tools,
  2. Locate 'SNMP Service' on the list and double-click to change its properties,
  3. Select the 'Security' tab, make sure 'Send authentication trap' checkbox is marked and provide whitelist for the hosts, from which SNMP packets should be accepted,
  4. Provide accepted community names and their rights (as a rule of thumb it should be a READ ONLY unless it's a community string used for configuration management).
Service settings

With security settings configured, change startup type and service status according to your needs in the 'General' tab. Also, you can add Traps destinations to the list (in the 'Traps' tab), e.g. to receive the authentication trap from step #3, by typing Hostname and IP or IPX address to the relevant box, then save the settings.

And voilà, you can now use SNMP to monitor e.g. your printer server using NetCrunch:

NetCrunch Node Status

Summary

As you can see above, even if Microsoft depreciated it, enabling and configuring the SNMP service on the Windows machine is still quite an easy task.

It is worth noting, that with NetCrunch you can use it to monitor the health state of your SNMP devices in many ways, from a simple check if the service is responding, to the more complex queries, with highly specialized features such as Generic CMYK Printer Monitoring Pack / Printer Sensor.

Reference

netcrunch 10servicessnmpwindows

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