Distributed data collection through remote probing in windows environments

Distributed data collector (DDC) is a framework to ease and automate repetitive executions of console applications (probes) over a set of LAN networked Windows personal computers. The framework allows for the remote execution of probes, providing support for collecting the execution output of probes (standard output and standard error). Additionally, right after a probe execution, the output can be parsed and processed by user-defined code (post collecting code) that can act accordingly to user´s needs. The framework can be useful to perform repetitive large-scale monitoring and administrative tasks over machines with transient availability, that is, machines that present no guarantees of being available at a given time. A major strength of DDC lies in the fact that it does not require installation of software in remote nodes, avoiding administrative burdens that remote daemons and alike normally provoke. Besides presenting the data collection framework, the paper discusses the results of a 30-day monitoring experiment conducted with DDC. The experiment collected resource usage metrics over 169 Windows machines from classroom laboratories of an academic institution.