Operations Manager Management Pack Authoring - Performance Data
This document is part of the Operations Manager Management Pack Authoring Guide. The Microsoft System Center team has validated this procedure as of the original version. We will continue to review any changes and periodically provide validations on later revisions as they are made. Please feel free to make any corrections or additions to this procedure that you think would assist other users.
Performance counters are numeric data that is used to measure the performance of some aspect of the application. The following table lists the kinds of data sources in a System Center Operations Manager 2007 management pack that produce performance data.
| Windows Performance | Samples a Windows performance counter at specified interval. |
| WMI Performance | Runs a WMI query at specified interval and uses the value of a numeric property for performance data. |
Details on each performance data source are provided in the following sections. This includes the information that is required to retrieve the required data, properties available in the resulting data, and what workflows the performance data source supports.
Windows Performance
To define a monitor or rule based on a Windows performance counter, the object name and counter name of the performance counter to sample must be specified with a frequency that specifies how frequently to sample the data. The instance name only has to be specified if the same counter will be collected for multiple objects on the same agent. If this is the case, a $Target variable will typically be used for the value in the instance name in order to differentiate between the performance values for different objects. The counter must be available on the agent computer that is running the monitor or rule or an error will be created in the Operations Manager event log on the agent.
Properties
The following table shows the properties that are available from a Windows performance counter.
| Property Name | Description |
| Object Name | Name of the performance object. |
| Counter Name | Name of the performance counter. |
| Instance Name | Name of the instance if it is specified. |
| Value | Numeric value of the performance data. |
| TimeSampled | Time that sample was performed in UTC format. |
Workflows Supported
Windows performance can be used in the following kinds of workflows:
- Monitors
- Collection Rules
WMI Performance
WMI performance refers to numeric data that is retrieved from a WMI query. This lets performance data be retrieved that is not available from a performance counter and without using the complexity and overhead of a script. The monitor or rule runs the query on a specified schedule and maps the value of the specified numeric field into the value property of the performance data.
For example, a monitor might have to track the size of a particular file. This might be a log file that indicates a particular problem when it exceeds a particular size. The name and size of the file could be retrieved from a query similar to the following:
Select Name, FileSize from CIM_DataFile Where Name = 'C:\\MyApp\\MyAppLog.txt'
The monitor could run this query regularly by using the FileSize property for the value of the performance data and the Name property for the Instance property.
Properties
The WMI query returns a property bag with properties returned from the query. This set of properties will vary, depending on the class returned and the properties specified in the query.
Workflows Supported
WMI performance can be used in the following kinds of workflows:
- Monitors
- Collection Rules