Using SolarWinds to highlight servers in a pending reboot status

Had a request to use SolarWinds to highlight servers in a pending reboot status. Here’s what I did.

Sorry, this is currently broken. After implementing this I realized I need to enable PowerShell remoting on all servers for it to work, else the script just returns the result from the SolarWinds server. Will update this post after I fix it at my workplace. If you come across this post before that, all you need to do is enable PowerShell remoting across all your servers and change the script execution to “Remote Host”.

SolarWinds has a built in application monitor called “Windows Update Monitoring”. It does a lot more than what I want so I disabled all the components I am not interested in. (I could have also just created a new application monitor, I know, just was lazy).

winupdatemon-1

The part I am interested in is the PowerShell Monitor component. By default it checks for the reboot required status by checking a registry key: HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired. Here’s the default script –

$Error.Clear();
$regpath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired";
$res = Test-Path $regpath;
if ($Error.Count -ne 0) 
 {
 Write-Host "Message: $($Error[0])";
 exit 1;
 }
if ($res) { 
 write-host "Message: Reboot required."
 write-host "Statistic: 1"
 exit 0
 }
else
 {
 write-host "Message: Reboot not required."
 write-host "Statistic: 0"
 exit 0
 }

$Error.Clear();

$regpath = "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired";

$res = Test-Path $regpath;

if ($Error.Count -ne 0)

{

Write-Host "Message: $($Error[0])";

exit 1;

}

if ($res) {

write-host "Message: Reboot required."

write-host "Statistic: 1"

exit 0

}

else

{

write-host "Message: Reboot not required."

write-host "Statistic: 0"

exit 0

}

Inspired by this blog post which monitors three more registry keys and also queries ConfigMgr, I replaced the default PowerShell script with the following –

$res = $false
if (Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing\RebootPending" -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }
if (Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired" -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }
if (Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" -Name PendingFileRenameOperations -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }
try { 
   $util = [wmiclass]"\\.\root\ccm\clientsdk:CCM_ClientUtilities"
   $status = $util.DetermineIfRebootPending()
   if (($status -ne $null) -and $status.RebootPending) { $res = $true }
} catch { }

if ($res) { 
   write-host "Message: Reboot required."
   write-host "Statistic: 1"
   exit 0
} else {
   write-host "Message: Reboot not required."
   write-host "Statistic: 0"
   exit 0
}

$res = $false

if (Get-ChildItem "HKLM:\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Component Based Servicing\RebootPending" -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }

if (Get-Item "HKLM:\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\WindowsUpdate\Auto Update\RebootRequired" -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }

if (Get-ItemProperty "HKLM:\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager" -Name PendingFileRenameOperations -EA Ignore) { $res = $true }

try {

$util = [wmiclass]"\\.\root\ccm\clientsdk:CCM_ClientUtilities"

$status = $util.DetermineIfRebootPending()

if (($status -ne $null) -and $status.RebootPending) { $res = $true }

} catch { }

if ($res) {

write-host "Message: Reboot required."

write-host "Statistic: 1"

exit 0

} else {

write-host "Message: Reboot not required."

write-host "Statistic: 0"

exit 0

}

Then I added the application monitor to all my Windows servers. The result is that I can see the following information on every node –

winupdatemon-2

Following this I created alerts to send me an email whenever the status of the above component (“Machine restart status …”) went down for any node. And I also created a SolarWinds report to capture all nodes for which the above component was down.

winupdatemon-3

Then I assigned this to a schedule to run once in a month after our patching window to email me a list of nodes that require reboots.