Friday, August 14, 2009

OpsMgr and empty reports – Part 4 – Examples for disk reports

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Postings in the same series:
Part I   – The Introduction.
Part II  – Tips & Tricks
Part III – Targeted Reports 
Part V  – Scheduling / Publishing Reports and some tricks
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On the previous postings of this series I got a lot of mail and comments. Many of which were about reports for disks like Physical Disk Performance History, Performance Reports on Logical disks and so on. Somehow many people don’t get filled reports for these items. So this posting will be about those reports and how to get them filled.

Before I start I must say that this posting is based on information from Cameron Fullers article about making a free disk space report. So when you’re new to that article read it and then come back since this posting will be – as much as possible – in telegram style.

  1. Go to Reporting > Microsoft Generic Report Library > double click on the Performance report. The Performance Report will be opened.

  2. In the parameter area click on the button Change. The settings screen will be opened now. This is the most important screen for this report since here you can select anything you want for a Performance Report.
    image

  3. Click on New Chart and then on New Series. This way a new chart will be added to the List area with one item:
    image

  4. Click the Add Group button. And now here comes the most important part of all: the selection of the component. As stated in in the second posting of this series, under the header ‘Add Group vs. Add Object’: ‘…When running a Report it is better to use the ‘Add Group’ option and select the server(s) with the Object Class Windows Computer’. This way the report will most of the times be filled because Windows Computer has a parent relationship to almost all other classes, also the class needed to get a filled report.

    And here the same rule applies. So select the Windows computer, in this case dc01.systemcenter.org:
    image
    Be sure to select the Class Windows Computer. Click Add so it appears in the Selected Objects pane and click OK.

  5. Only a counter has to be selected in order to get a filled report. For this, click on the Browse button nearby the Rule section:
    image

  6. Go to the second tab, Search by Counter and select as Performance Object PhysicalDisk.  Leave the Counter on (All) and click on Search. All available counters will be displayed:
    image

  7. For this example I have chosen the first one, Physical Disk Average Disk Queue Length 2008. Click OK. The screen as shown in step 3 is to be seen now. Select Specific Instances and select the first drive (C:).
    image


  8. Then click New Series button and repeat steps 4 to 7 but now select the D: drive (as long as it is a separate physical drive. If it is not the case then select at step 7 All Instances). This screen will be shown when completed:
    image 
    Repeat steps 4 to 7 for every physical disk you want this information for. Click OK when done.

  9. Select the timeframe, whether or not to use business hours and the type of graph.
    image
    Adjust it as needed and click Run.

  10. The report will be like this: 
     image

This example can be used for any other reports as well. It goes beyond this posting (and my blog as a whole) to describe every report which can be created in the same manner. Just experiment and have fun with it. When you get the hang of it, you’ll see there is a lot more in the Data Warehouse then one expects. And when it is in the DW, it can be put into a report.

Also, when a report runs as it should, give the chart in step 3 a nice name since it will be shown in the report. Something like Physical Disk Average Disk Queue Length Drive 0 Server DC01. Or just for fun and the IT Manager without any real knowledge: 
image

Of course, a single report can contain more graphs then just one. For instance, a report showing the disk, cpu, nic and RAM performance of a single server. And when the report is doing just fine, Publish it. Give the report a good name and a description. For the start date is better to use offsets like 7 days or 2 weeks for instance. In an upcoming blog posting in the same series I will talk about scheduling reports and share some tricks how to go about it. 

13 comments:

Anonymous said...

Thankyou very much Marnix. This is a lifesaver. Finally I can get some data to show.
Is there any way to also get LABELS on the X & Y axes, or if not presently, do you know if MS have got someone working on that aspect of Reporting?
Cheers,
John Bradshaw

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi John.

Good to hear this posting has helped you out. As a matter of a fact many of my customers bumped into the same issue, hence this posting or better, this series.

Until now I haven't been able to add lables to the X & Y axes. :(

Hope that Microsoft will pick this one up one day. A good idea is to file a report at Microsoft Connect. The more people report this as a dearly missed item, the bigger the change Microsoft will pick it up.

Best regards,
Marnix

John Bradshaw said...

Hello Marnix,
I have just been asked to prepare a report on the times when a set of servers have been "unavailable"
Can u pls give me some guidelines as to what approach you would take with such a request?
Thankyou again,
John Bradshaw

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi John.

Easy one.

Go to Reporting (duh!) > Microsoft generic Report Library > Availability

And instead of hitting the ADD GROUP button, you hit the ADD OBJECT button

Type a servername and hit SEARCH. Select the WINDOWS COMPUTER class object and click ADD > OK

Select the date and hit RUN. Now the availability will be shown.

In the Report Parameter area you can also select/define DOWN TIME classifications like WARNING, UNMONITORED and so on.

Hope this helps.

John, do you life in DownUnder? Wow! Hope I will visit that country once. Looks magnificent!

Happy Reporting John.

Greetz,
Marnix

John Bradshaw said...

Thx very much again Marnix. That is really helpful.
Yes, I live in the Land Down Under, and when I see all the troubles around many other places, I am very glad to be here!
And on top of that, we get LOTS of sunshine...There is a saying in one of our states (Queensland) that the weather is perfect one day and paradise the next. Well, it's not that good, but it comes pretty close at times. Best times to come are late March/early April or September/October. It gets too hot after October to travel. Then again, come for a year and see it all !!
John B

Marnix Wolf said...

You are welcome John.

Good to see that you are proud of your country.

But a year? Wish I could do so with my family but I am afraid this is not an option.

Bye,
Marnix

John Bradshaw said...

Hi marnix,
I am struggling to get two graphs out for percentage cpu interrupt time and percentage user time for a server.
Can u pls detail the steps for this? Hours have been spent tweaking/changing/searching, but no cigar.
Another client has also asked for a graph on %CPU time for a particular process. I don't know where to even start with this one.

I have posted a similar question to : http://social.technet.microsoft.com/Forums/en-US/operationsmanagerreporting/thread/8af9b54f-6071-45b4-b14d-b81f78379c59

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi John.

Sorry for the late answer but I wasn't able to respond earlier.

Check out this new posting of mine. It is the answer to your last question.

http://thoughtsonopsmgr.blogspot.com/2009/10/by-popular-demand-how-to-make-report.html

Hope this helps.

As for the other questions I see that Graham is already in the loop.

Best regards,
Marnix Wolf

John Bradshaw said...

Great answer Marnix. Thankyou so much for the extra effort!!
JB

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi John.

You are welcome. It was a good question you asked so I made a blogposting out of it. So I have to thank you since it has made my blog a bit better.

Thanks!

Best regards,
Marnix

Vince said...

Thanks for this help and all the other posts you have done. Are you able to help me with a problem? i am trying to produce a report for cpu performance for the previous month, i am able to get the report to show the previous 7 days but no more. I know that the operations DB only keeps 7 days worth of data but should the report get the rest from the DW DB?

Vince said...

Thanks for this help and all the other posts you have done. Are you able to help me with a problem? i am trying to produce a report for cpu performance for the previous month, i am able to get the report to show the previous 7 days but no more. I know that the operations DB only keeps 7 days worth of data but should the report get the rest from the DW DB?

Marnix Wolf said...

Hi Vince.
Almost sounds like you are querying the OpsMgr db. Strange. Let me take a look in one of my testenvironments. Won't be today though but I will get back to you. It should work.

Cheers,
Marnix