SNMPv3 on Windows

Hey Thwacksters,

I am going to start off by saying I know SNMPv3 is not officially supported on Windows by Microsoft. Even SNMPv2 hasn't gotten any love for a long time, since they of course pushing their own proprietary WMI protocol.

Nonetheless, I've been tasked with trying to establish SNMPv3 monitoring for our Windows servers. I've tried configuring this using the Net-SNMP agent, but without any success.

Before diving further into this rabbithole, I wanted to ask this forum, if you've had any success with this.

Thank you!

Find more posts tagged with

Accepted answers

All comments

chad.every

@admin_nsn , from a product standpoint I'd love to better understand the use case driving this. Was this a security related? Were there limitations on WMI/WinRM? Were Agents not an option?

admin_nsn

Hi Chad,

Yes, this is security-related. The customer needs secure monitoring for their infrastructure, which gives us three options: SNMPv3, WMI, or Agent-based monitoring.

We're avoiding the agent approach because it requires SYSTEM-level privileges on monitored servers. This creates a security risk by making the Orion platform a central point for code execution.

That leaves WMI and SNMPv3. Both allow us to control monitoring permissions, but of course WMI requires credential's which is just is a bigger configuration overhead for us, since the customer would have to create, configure and share credentials with us. Therefore we settled on SNMPv3.

But of course without knowing if it is even possible to have it configured on Windows in the first place.

ronan.tonilon

Hi @admin_nsn ,
You are right, Microsoft does not natively support SNMPv3 on Windows, and their built-in SNMP service only supports SNMPv1 and SNMPv2c, which are deprecated and insecure. Microsoft is more on WMI, WinRM, and in SolarWinds perspective, using Agent or Agentless monitoring for Windows. mostly SNMPv3 is used by network devices and Linux systems.

Net-SNMP is often used as a workaround, but it's not easy to integrate or stable for production monitoring with tools like SolarWinds.

Option 1: Stick to WMI or Agentless Monitoring for Windows

Best Practice: For Windows systems, SolarWinds recommends WMI or SolarWinds Agent, not SNMP.

WMI provides far more visibility into Windows internals (CPU, memory, disks, services, processes).
The SolarWinds Agent offers secure communication (TLS), better performance, and cross-firewall support.
You can still use SNMPv3 for network devices, Linux servers, etc.

Option 2: Use Net-SNMP (Windows port)

NOTE: Not recommended for production, best to test in lab. Also, since Net-SNMP is open-source, there are potential Net-SNMP vulnerabilities that can impact device management and potentially critical vulnerability like denial-of-service, which is why it is not recommended.

Status: Doable with effort, but fragile.

You can install the Net-SNMP agent for Windows and configure the snmpd.conf for SNMPv3.
You must define users, views, access policies, and encryption/authentication keys manually.
SolarWinds can technically poll from this agent using SNMPv3, if configured correctly.

Cons:

Configuration is non-trivial, poorly documented, and error-prone.
You lose visibility into native Windows performance counters and services.
No native integration with Windows event logs, processes, services, etc.

NOTE: Best for lab use, and is not recommended and do not rely for production.

Option 3: Use Third-Party SNMP Agents with SNMPv3 Support. And/Or Orion SDK

NOTE: This may be an option but there is no written documentation using third party SNMP Agents and integration with SolarWinds. User of Third party tools and SDK has limited support with SolarWinds Technical Support (Working with Support | SolarWinds, Support for Orion SDK and other API-related tools).

Vendors like SNMP Research, BMC, or SNMP Informant offer paid agents.

They provide full SNMPv3 support, including encryption and authentication.
Can expose Windows performance data over SNMP.
Designed for enterprise use.

Cons:

Licensing costs
Requires careful testing and tuning
Not widely used unless you have compliance mandates (FIPS, FedRAMP, etc.)

Hope this helps.

admin_nsn

Hi Ronan

I appreciate your answer and I also agree with it. I think I might just come to terms with SNMPv3 just isn't suited for Windows. Thanks!