Monitoring .NET application performance counters with APM

Hi all,

We have developped an internal application using .NET framework. This application is instrumented using performance counters.

We used various types for counters : NumberOfItems32, RateOfCountsPerSecond32, AverageTimer32 (with corresponding AverageBase counter).

All counters are working fine in perfmon.

But in Orion APM, only NumberOfItems32 counters work. The other counters value is quite always 0 (sometime a weird value like 999509039524523).

Does anyone know how to handle calculated performance counters in Orion ?

Regards,

Stephane Gayet

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qle

Have you tried to use any other utilities (such as WMI Explorer) to perform WMI queries from the NPM server to see if they are getting the same results as APM?

FormerMember

Hi,

I tried both the RPC and WMI flavor of APM performance counters. Each give the correct value of raw counters but are unable to read the value of calculated counters.

I just tried WMI Explorer as you suggested and the result is the same : raw counters works but not calculated ones.

Thanks

Stephane

FormerMember

Hi,

When reading value of a cooked performance counter, Microsoft documentation says that you must read it twice the first time to initialize it :

If the calculated value of a counter depends on two counter reads, the first read operation returns 0.0. Resetting the performance counter properties to specify a different counter is equivalent to creating a new performance counter, and the first read operation using the new properties returns 0.0. The recommended delay time between calls to the NextValue method is one second, to allow the counter to perform the next incremental read.

If I trace in log file value of counter, I see this behavior :

The first time I read the counter, the value is 0 :

[INFO ]2011-03-17 06:54:06,186 – Nombre de messages par s:

+++++++++++

Sample values -

BaseValue = 0

CounterFrequency = 3600180000

CounterTimeStamp = 607015197453861

CounterType = RateOfCountsPerSecond32

RawValue = 3

SystemFrequency = 3600180000

TimeStamp = 607015179943065

TimeStamp100nSec = 129448148461712389

++++++++++++++++++++++

Value = 0

++++++++++++++++++++++

Five minutes later, when I read it again, the value is well calculated :

[INFO ]2011-03-17 06:59:06,276 – Nombre de messages par s:

+++++++++++

Sample values -

BaseValue = 0

CounterFrequency = 3600180000

CounterTimeStamp = 608095611150615

CounterType = RateOfCountsPerSecond32

RawValue = 6

SystemFrequency = 3600180000

TimeStamp = 608095610510679

TimeStamp100nSec = 129448151462764205

++++++++++++++++++++++

Value = 0.009996718

++++++++++++++++++++++

May be APM change properties beetween two reads of counter value ...

Regards,