In the previous blog posts we discussed how to gather custom performance counters and examples of how to create custom reports for free disk space and processor utilization.

In this blog entry we will use the performance counters created in OpsMgr in the first part of the series and the concepts used to create other custom reports to bring us to this step. This blog series includes the following posts:

• Part 1 – Gathering Custom Performance Counters in OpsMgr
• Part 2 – How to create a free disk space report
• Part 3 – How to create a processor utilization report for a group of servers
• Part 4 – How to create a custom performance counters report for a group of servers
• Part 5 – How to make my custom report publicly available
• Part 6 – How to schedule my custom report for delivery

How to create a custom performance counters report for a group of servers

The easy approach is not to use a report for this, but rather to use the Operations Console directly to provide a graph. To do this we create a custom folder on in OpsMgr and store it in the management pack which we have used to generate our reports.

Inside of this view we create a new Performance View.

For the performance view we limit it to our custom group, and only to show information collected by the specific rules which we created.

The result is an easy to use view which will provide access to the values for these performance counters over the last 7 days (the default data retention period for the Operations Manager database performance metrics).

The second option is to create a report to provide the custom performance counter information. This can be done through creating a simple custom report using the following steps:

1. In the Operations Console open Reports / Microsoft Generic Report Library / Performance

1. Double-click on the Performance report
2. Set the date to Yesterday as a starting Date
3. Click Change to configure the report
4. Click on the New Chart button

1. Add a name for the chart in the chart title (ASP.Net counters in this example).
2. Add a new Series.

1. Click the Add Object button
2. Type in C: for the field next to Object Group.
3. Add the first server off of the list and click Ok.

1. Click New Series
2. Click on the Add Object
3. Object contains the name of the next server.
4. Add the next server off of the list and ok.
5. Repeat steps 11-14 until all servers / counters required for the report are added.
6. Click on the first of the series shown in the chart and click on the Browse button under Rule.
7. Choose Search by Name (since we know the name of the management pack)
8. Enter the management pack name we used to store our custom rules.

1. And press Ok.
2. Perform the same action for the remaining counters. Click Ok when completed.

1. Click the Run button to run the report.

Now we have create a custom view and custom report for our custom gathered counters! The last three examples have shown how these reports can be created, but without making the reports available to others their benefit is limited.

In the next two parts of this series we will discuss how to make a custom report available via the reporting URL and how to schedule custom reports for delivery.