Introduction

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NetXMS allows the collection of DCI from several origins. The Windows Performance Counters origin is a particular origin that can be used to monitor the performance counters exposed on a specific node.
Currently this origin is available only for the Windows agent starting from version 1.2.7.

Windows Performance Counters

After choosing the Windows Performance Counters as origin, pressing the select button will pop up the hierarchy tree from where to select the interested counter:

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The left side of the dialog lists all the counters available, whether the right side of the dialog lists all the instances available for the selected counter.
The main difference between the performance counters exposed by agent configuration and the performance counters selected here is the major flexibility of this new approach:

• This DCI can be easily transformed in template and applied to new nodes without any kind of interaction with the configuration file.
• The value can be used “as it is” or can be generated as an average between a group of samples, at agent level. The number of sample used to compute the average must be put in the “Sample value for average value calculation” field (NB high number of sample will delay the computation of the initial value).
  

All the other configuration values such as Polling (mode and interval) or Storage (retention time) have the same logic used for other origins. It is important to note that average computation will be done at agent level, thus reducing network traffic and DB storage resources.
Here follows an example of the CPU resource usage by Hyper-V guests computed using the Windows Performance Counters origin vs Agent origin.

DCI computed using the Windows Performance Counters origin

As sole step, it is necessary to select it from the list of available counters:

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DCI computed exporting it form the Agent configuration file

First, it is necessary to edit the agent configuration file to export the counter of interest. Adding these lines and restarting the agent will do the job:

*WinPerf
Counter = Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor.%Total Run Time(_Total):"\Hyper-V Hypervisor Virtual Processor(_Total)\% Total Run Time":60:A:INT:"The percentage of CPU used by Hyper-V Guests."

Then, it is possible to select it from the Agent:

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