Tonight I created a example on how to use a Linux/UNIX command to return data as performance data in OM12. In this example we build a rule that count files in a folder and returns it as performance data.

1. In the Operations Manager console, navigate to Author/Management Pack Objects/Rules
2. Right-click rules and create a new Rule, select Collection Rules/Probe Based/UNIX/Linux Shell Command (Performance) rule
3. Select a management pack
4. General, input a name and a rule target. For example “Field – X plat – Number of files” as name and “SUSE Linux Enterprise Computer” as monitor target
5. Schedule, select how often you want the rule to run the command, for example every 15 minute
6. Shell Command Details, input the script you want to use. The command can be a path to a binary or script file or a single-line shell command. In this example we can the following command to count files in the /tmp folder
   find /tmp | wc -l
7. Filter Expression, use default settings and click Next
8. Performance Mapper, input name of object, counter and instance, for example
   Object: Folder Management
   Counter: Number of files
   Instance: /tmp
9. Click Create and your rule is ready!

You can now navigate to a performance view and show the data collected by the rule (might need to wait some minutes depending on your rule settings)

When running a performance report against a group you get a average value for all the members of the group. Often you need the report to specify each member of the group in the report. You can of course add each member of the group as object to the report. Another solution is to build a report where you can input a group. That will save you some time if you already have updated groups you want to run reports against. The following query can be run against a group that contains computer objects, it will then find the members of the group and run the report against each of them.


SELECT vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityGuid, vManagedEntityTypeImage.Image, Perf.vPerfHourly.DateTime, Perf.vPerfHourly.SampleCount, Perf.vPerfHourly.AverageValue,
Perf.vPerfHourly.StandardDeviation, Perf.vPerfHourly.MaxValue, vManagedEntity.FullName, vManagedEntity.Path, vManagedEntity.Name,
vManagedEntity.DisplayName, vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityDefaultName, vPerformanceRuleInstance.InstanceName, vPerformanceRule.ObjectName,
vPerformanceRule.CounterName
FROM Perf.vPerfHourly INNER JOIN
vManagedEntity ON Perf.vPerfHourly.ManagedEntityRowId = vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityRowId INNER JOIN
vManagedEntityType ON vManagedEntity.ManagedEntityTypeRowId = vManagedEntityType.ManagedEntityTypeRowId LEFT OUTER JOIN
vManagedEntityTypeImage ON vManagedEntityType.ManagedEntityTypeRowId = vManagedEntityTypeImage.ManagedEntityTypeRowId INNER JOIN
vPerformanceRuleInstance ON vPerformanceRuleInstance.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId = Perf.vPerfHourly.PerformanceRuleInstanceRowId INNER JOIN
vPerformanceRule ON vPerformanceRuleInstance.RuleRowId = vPerformanceRule.RuleRowId
WHERE (vPerformanceRule.CounterName LIKE N'%Available MBytes%') and (Perf.vPerfHourly.DateTime > @ReportParameter2 and Perf.vPerfHourly.DateTime < @ReportParameter3)

ORDER BY Perf.vPerfHourly.DateTime


In this example the report will show the “Available MBytes” performance counter for a group that you input as parameter @Group. It will show data between @ReportParameter2 and @ReportParameter3 (dates). I get all groups from the database by this query


Select DISTINCT BMESource.DisplayName as [Group Name]
From OperationsManager.dbo.BaseManagedEntity BMESource
Inner Join OperationsManager.dbo.Relationship R
On R.SourceEntityId = BMESource.BaseManagedEntityId
Inner Join OperationsManager.dbo.BaseManagedEntity BMETarget
On R.TargetEntityId = BMETarget.BaseManagedEntityId


The two date parameters, @ReportParameter2 and @ReportParameter3 I get from two queries that returns current data and current date minus seven days.

SELECT convert(date,getdate(),21)
SELECT convert(date,dateadd(day,-7,getdate()),21)

In my report I also added a matrix to show the values. I added the following line as BackgroundColor on the data value cell. This will give me a red background on every value below 100, in this example each time a machine had less than 100 Mb free memory. =iif(Fields!AverageValue.Value < 50, "Red", "White")
Big thanks to Mike Eisenstein for good ideas and SQL help.

After you have implement Audit Collection Services in your environment you must start monitor the collector. There is a number of performance counters that can help you with this:

• Connected Clients
• Database Queue % Full
• Database Queue Backoff Threshold in %
• Database Queue Disconnect Threshold in %
• Database Queue Length
• DB Loader Event Inserts/sec
• DB Loader Principal Inserts/sec
• DB Loader String Inserts/sec
• DB Principal Cache Hit %
• DB Request Queue Length
• DB String Cache Hit %
• Event time in collector in milliseconds
• Incoming Events/sec
• Interface Audit Insertions/sec
• Interface Queue Length
• Registered Queries

If you want to collect this performance data and review it for analyse and plannig, you can first create a collection rule and then a performance view.

1. Start the console, click Authoring
2. Right-click Rules and choose to create a new rule
3. Rule Type: Choose to create a Collection Rules/Performance Based/Windows Performance. Click Next
4. General: Input a rule name, description and choose “Microsoft Audit Collection Services Collector” as rule target, then click next.
5. Performance Counter: input “ACS Collector” as object. If you want to collect for example number of events inserted in the database per second, select “DB Loader Event Inserts/sec” as counter. Select “Include all instances for the selected counter”. Configure the interval and then click Next
6. Optimized Collection: Choose to use optimization or not, click Create

If you want to view the collected data you can create a performance view, and configure it to show data related to “Microsoft Audit Collection Services Collector”.