Monitoring a specific user login

The user must be logged into the system likely because the application must be run in a foreground desktop session, rather than as a background service. In that case it's best to monitor the application processes itself, since they will only be running when the user is logged into the system and the application is running. The advantage to this method over simply monitoring if the user is logged in, is someone could always close the application but not log out. The method assures that not only is the user logged in, but that the application is running as well.

I would recommend using the Real-Time Process Explorer to select the processes associated with the application, then begin monitoring those by clicking the "Start Monitoring" button and walking through the wizard to create and assign an application template to that node.

Thanks aLTeReGo!  I knew you'd know the right thing to do... I will run this by the application owner and explain the pros of monitoring the application processes as you explained.  Thanks again!

I agree with you that the app owner would benefit more from monitoring the application itself but so that I have the overall big picture... is it possible for Solarwinds to monitor and/or alert on if a user is logged into a server?  Thanks again for all your time and help.

It is possible, though this would need to be done via custom script since this information is not easily queryable because it must be correlated across multiple WMI classes. Below are some examples that you can use to get you started. It's important to note that there are always many logged in sessions for various system accounts, so you will want to filter based on the LogonType = 2, which means interactive session. If you need assistance creating such a script I recommend posting to the Script Lab where the community script gurus commonly frequent.

• How to get the logged on user with WMI (VBScript) - Decrypt my World - Site Home - MSDN Blogs
• Win32_LogonSession class (Windows)