PowerRecon monitoring of Windows based systems stops unexpectedly and the account used for monitoring is locked out

This article discusses an issue which may occur when monitoring Windows bases systems with PowerRecon 3.1 and above. When monitoring Windows based systems with PowerRecon the account specified may become locked out and may require that and administrator reset the account. This issue can occur if the credentials attached to a set of servers fail to authenticate to any one of the servers in question.

When monitoring a windows based system with PowerRecon 3.1 and above the credentials attached to a specific server or group of servers may become locked out based on the account lockout policies implemented in the environment. When PowerRecon attempts to connect to a remote system for monitoring purposes it may make multiple attempts to collect the performance metrics. If the server which PowerRecon is trying to monitor is denying the remote connection requests it may cause the account to become locked out as PowerRecon will attempt to connect multiple times.

To resolve this issue some changes to the PowerRecon Monitoring Service configuration file are required.

Please review the settings listed below. The following options must be set in the PlateSpin.Monitoring.Service.exe.config located in Program Files\PlateSpin PowerRecon 3.1 Server\Services\Monitoring directory.

<setting name="AuthenthicationRetryCount" serializeAs="String">
        <value>0</value>
</setting>

<setting name="StopMonitorIfAuthenticationFailed" serializeAs="String">
        <value>True</value>
</setting>


AuthenthicationRetryCount – default value is 0.

Controls how many times the monitoring service should try to authenticate for a computer or account (see the next setting).
0 means try until success or stop from monitoring.

For example, the computer C1 and C2 both having credential A and AuthenthicationRetryCount = 3.

StopMonitorIfAuthenticationFailed = True.

If True, then the computer will be removed from monitoring when the number of failed authentication requests is exceeded.
“[11/16/2007 6:00:51 PM] [Error] Computer: dev-preets The maximum authentication attempts for computer dev-preets.platespin.com have been reached. The monitoring for the computer will be stopped.”


If False , the following message will be logged:
“[11/16/2007 3:24:37 PM] [Error] Computer: dev-preets  The maximum authentication attempts for computer dev-preets have been reached. The monitoring for the computer can be stopped.”