Log processes running on a windows server

Does anyone know if there's a way to keep a log on a windows server via APM that looks like this:

POLL TIME: mm/dd/yyyy hh:mm:ss am/pm

ProcessRunning StartTime MemoryUsed CPU% FileLocation

And then for that given date/time on that node we could see what what running for processes and possibly services.

The goal is to correlate events we find (spikes in disk queue, cpu%, service crashes, event log info, etc) with what processes/services were running at a given time. So many it queries a server for this data every 2 or 5 minutes and records it and then with Orion we can go into a node and pick a time to see what was running.

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jiri.tomek

Hello,
you can't save such data into APM and access them from APM directly. However you can use a Windows Script Monitor with custom VBScript that can do this for you. Write a VBscript that would generate such report file and store it to some appropriate location with timestamp.

Then if you see in APM that there is/was some CPU spike, just go to that report location and pick up corresponding file generated by that script.

MrSampsonite

Are you referring to a script specifically that you know of?

So maybe we put the content out to a text file or even into a SQL database. Then have APM query that file/table periodically and store in Orion?

jiri.tomek

No, I don't know about such script.

Also my thought was a bit different than you suggested.

1) Create VB script that lists all processes and writes them for example to "\\apm-server\data\192.168.0.123_processes\2010_12_09_05_03_12.txt ". 192.168.0.123 is IP of monitored computer and filename is current date.

2) Create Application Template for monitoring coputers with CPU/... spikes

a) Add Windows Script Monitor to template and assign this VBscript to it. Pass monitored computer IP as script argument ${IP} in monitor settings.

b) Add process/service/... whatever monitors you need to catch your performance issues (CPU spike etc).

3) Set thresholds for CPU and/or other metrics so you are alerted when performance issue such as CPU spike occurs

3) Assign created template to problematic computers

4) Setup alerts to get notified when problem occurs.

5) Now this template is monitoring your computers. Then some CPU spike occurs and you get alert about that.

6) You look at source computer and time of alert and let's say it's computer 192.168.0.56 and time is 8:15:23 12/9/2010

7) Navigate to "\\apm-server\Data\192.168.0.56_processes" and look for file closest to "2010_09_12_08_15_23.txt" (timestamp may be little different because alert could be triggered few seconds later)

8) Open processes file and here you can see what processes were running and which one consumes CPU

Using this approach you have CPU or other resource monitoring coupled with process file generator so when you get alert about performance issue, you get also processes list stored into file at the same time. All from within APM. Most challenging part would be writing VBscript. One example that you can start with can be found here.

MrSampsonite

Thanks. We'll probably try to implement this at some point. Right now, I'm in a trial and someone from our team requested that the product be able to do this.

Thanks again!

hhernandez

hi MrSampsonite,

I see you have you Orion on a Windows Server 2008 R2 64bits, how is it working for you?

did you have any problems installing it?

Regards