title: Windows Services
agents: windows
catalog: os/ps
license: GPL
distribution: check_mk
description:
 Check the current state of a Windows service.  Each service is either {running} or {stopped}
 or in a transitional state like {starting} or {stopping}.  This check becomes critical if the
 service in question is not in the state {running}. It is getting UNKNOWN if the service is missing
 on the system at all.

 If you have just a small number of Windows hosts to monitor,
 manual check configuration with {checks +=} will probably do.
 With a larger number of hosts we propose using {inventory_services_rules}.
 This allows auto-detection of services according to their names,
 current states and start types. The auto-detection can also make use
 of host tags in order to use different rules on different sets of
 hosts (for example for monitoring certain services only on production
 servers). Inventory and manual checks can be used in parallel.

item:
 The name of the service as string. Please note, that the agent replaces
 spaces in the service names with underscores. If you are unsure
 about the correct spelling of the name then please look at the
 output of the agent (cmk -d HOSTNAME). The service names are in the first column
 of the section {<<<services>>>}. Please do not mix up the service
 names with the display names of the services. Those are just being displayed
 as a further information.

inventory:
 The inventory function of this check helps you to auto-detect then services
 that should be monitored on your hosts. Because Check_MK cannot know, which
 services are important for you, you have to configure some rules.

 The option {inventory_services_rules} holds a list of rules where each rule
 contains one entry matching a list of service matching strings (regexes)
 state/start mode.
