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According to Technet's Features Removed or Deprecated in Windows Server 2012, SNMP is being depreciated:

SNMP is deprecated. Instead, use the Common Information Model (CIM), which is supported by the WS-Management web services protocol and implemented as Windows Remote Management.

Since SNMP is fundamental to most monitoring systems, this caught my attention. What exactly does "deprecated" mean in terms of Windows Server (is it standardized)? If so, how long until SNMP is no longer available (i.e. the next Major release of MS Server, a service pack)?

Also, is anyone aware of other organizations deprecating SNMP in favor of something else?

TheCleaner
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Kyle Brandt
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1 Answers1

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Deprecated in this sense does not mean SNMP is no longer available in Server 2012. It's still right there, installable as a feature.

"Deprecated" in this sense is simply a yellow flag to say "hey, we want to get rid of this some time in the indeterminate future."

I highly doubt the decision has been made yet as to when exactly they are going to no longer offer it as an installable feature of Windows Server. And if the decision has been made internally, they haven't made it public.

It's been pretty evident for a while (in my opinion) that Microsoft has been wanting to ditch their SNMP engine. I always figured that's why they never pursued their own SNMPv3 engine.

Edit: Even when MS does finally drop their SNMP implementation, there will still be 3rd party ones around.

Fact of the matter is that there are and have been for a long time, much better ways than SNMP to monitor Windows servers.

Also, is anyone aware of other organizations deprecating SNMP in favor of something else?

HP comes to mind, (though they haven't "officially" deprecated it like MS, I think they will in the future) and anyone else who's hip to CIM and WBEM.

Ryan Ries
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