Load Third Party Performance Metrics Into MOM

Forgive me if this is old hat to you but I’ve google like crazy and not found any documentation on this. I was asked to look if I could load performance objects and counters from a 3rd party product into MOM. The problem was that the product in question didn’t have any performance counters and no performance fucntionality existed in the vendor’s management pack. I was given a "what if" scenario: could I do anything if I had a file with the performance measurements in it?

I checked it out. There appeared to be nothing on the net. I already knew how to parse a log file so that bit was easy. But could I use it to load performance counters? The answer is yes.

Set up an application log provider that scans a folder for CSV files. Configure the format as being "Performance Log".
Set up a custom management pack. Create a performance rule that uses the application log provider.
Now, configure your 3rd party product to produce a CSV file in the location specified by your provider. It should be in the format of a Windows Performance Log in CSV format.

If you need to see what format the file should be in, then run Perfmon and capture a CSV log file. It looks something like this:

"(PDH-CSV 4.0) (GMT Standard Time)(0)","\DubFS1SAN% Seek Time"
"02/01/2007 11:56:17.600","4.8586022896423113"
"02/01/2007 12:06:18.602","0.17951715634603183"
"02/01/2007 12:16:19.604","0.17951715634603183"
"02/01/2007 12:26:20.606","4.8586022896423113"
"02/01/2007 12:36:21.607","7.9779923785064932"

The header defines the column names. We’ve got date, time and the performance counter. Note the counter name is in the format \<server being measured><Object><Counter>.

Associate the management pack with a test computer group and drop some test log files onto it. Give it a few minutes and then open your Operator Console (don’t use an already open one). Navigate into "Performance" and open up the server that has the log file on it. You’ll now find the new objects and metrics are available to report on. Your MOM Reports shouldn’t have any data until after the report DTS job runs (usually 01:00).

All that remains now is to generate and format this log file. Your third party product must be able to produce these metrics and you must be able to get the out in some way. Then you should format them, rename them and drop them into the right location. In theory, this should all be possible via a scheduled script.

If you are going to try this, please get it running in a VM lab first. Don’t go filling your report server with uselss junk and deploying test management packs all over the production network. Once you’ve got the mechanism working, define what you need, restest in the lab again and finally do a pilot rollout on production before you go live.

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