Custom Counters

Out-of-the-box, we have collected a set of Perfmon counters and dashboards that pertain to .NET applications. If you would like to collect your own counters, you first need to uncomment the appSettings section of the App.config to provide a unique plugin GUID. Then customize the counterList.

The CIM interface is used to collect to Perfmon data. You can use the following directions to find and build new entries for the counterList array in plugin.json.

Get a list of all counter categories:

# Using Powershell 4.0
PS C:\> Get-CimClass Win32_PerfFormattedData* | Select CimClassName

Let's take root/cimv2:Win32_PerfFormattedData_MSSQLSQLEXPRESS_MSSQLSQLEXPRESSBufferManager for example.

• provider = "MSSQLSQLEXPRESS"
• category = "MSSQLSQLEXPRESSBufferManager"

The format is Win32_PerfFormattedData_{provider}_{category}.

Get a list of all counters for that category:

PS C:\> Get-CimInstance "Win32_PerfFormattedData_MSSQLSQLEXPRESS_MSSQLSQLEXPRESSBufferManager"


Caption               :
Description           :
Name                  :
Frequency_Object      :
Frequency_PerfTime    :
Frequency_Sys100NS    :
Timestamp_Object      :
Timestamp_PerfTime    :
Timestamp_Sys100NS    :
AWElookupmapsPersec   : 0
AWEstolenmapsPersec   : 0
AWEunmapcallsPersec   : 0
AWEunmappagesPersec   : 0
AWEwritemapsPersec    : 0
Buffercachehitratio   : 100
CheckpointpagesPersec : 0
Databasepages         : 247
FreeliststallsPersec  : 0
Freepages             : 396
LazywritesPersec      : 0
Pagelifeexpectancy    : 251325
PagelookupsPersec     : 56
PagereadsPersec       : 0
PagewritesPersec      : 0
ReadaheadpagesPersec  : 0
Reservedpages         : 0
Stolenpages           : 893
Targetpages           : 84612
Totalpages            : 1536
PSComputerName        :

• counter = "Buffercachehitratio"
• unit = "% Cache hits" Check the Metric Units Reference when selecting units.

Putting that all together, you would add the following line under counterList in plugin.json.

{"provider": "MSSQLSQLEXPRESS", "category":"MSSQLSQLEXPRESSBufferManager", "counter":"Buffercachehitratio", "unit": "% cache hits"}

Optionally, you can include an instance property. You can see the following in the template.

{"provider": "PerfOS", "category":"Processor", "instance":"_Total", "counter":"PercentProcessorTime", "unit": "% time"}

There is an instance of the counter for each logical processor. The _total instance represents the sum of all of them.

If you run this, you'll see all of the instances and the Name property is the identifier.

Get-CimInstance "Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Processor"

If the counter has multiple instances and the instance property is not included in plugin.json all instances will be polled automatically.