Can I use Splunk (wmi or forwarder) to see if a specific service is running on a given host? Can I get a list of all services running on that (those) host(s)?
If you're not too picky, you can also use the Windows System Event Log entries written by the Service Control Manager to see when a particular Service was last stopped or started.
Just FYI, this semi works; if the machine loses power suddenly, kicks the wrong disk, etc then the event isn't generated or potentially isn't logged and thus cannot be forwarded and thus splunk doesn't know.
If you're looking for a report to give you some idea of your availability, this might work as you can see the services starting back up. If you're looking for something to alert you that the service isn't running, then this has issues.
I realize this is an old answer, but since I came across it I thought I'd comment for others.
You could use the sc
command line utility in a scripted input.
DESCRIPTION:
SC is a command line program used for communicating with the
Service Control Manager and services.
USAGE:
sc <server> [command] [service name] <option1> <option2>...
List all services:
sc query type= service
Get status for the eventlog service:
sc query eventlog
There is probably a way to do this with WMI as well.