IIS monitoring not seeing some performance counters

Have you tried running Perfmon.exe from the Orion server itself, connecting to the remote host and seeing if those Windows Performance Counters are available? Trying it locally is helpful, but I have seen many instances where the performance counters appeared locally but not remotely.

No, that is definitely the problem--it can't connect remotely.  I just don't know why.  I've been using other servers for which SAM is successfully retrieving perfmon counters (for example, the "Windows Server 2003-2012 Services and Counters" template) to determine what "right" looks like.

But your comment got me refocused on the real problem: "access", so I started looking at the firewall again.  I searched a bit on remote perfmon issues, and one recommendation was to enable the pre-defined "Performance Logs and Alerts (TCP-In)" rule.  This rule is not enabled on most of my servers--and they seem to work, but I enabled it just to test--and it worked!  I was able to remotely connect PerfMon from the SAM server to the web server, and every unknown counter on my web server came up in SAM except "URI Cache Flushes Counter".  I was ecstatic for about 2 minutes.  I was sitting in SAM, hitting "Poll Now", waiting patiently for that last counter to go green, when they ALL stopped working again!!!  The rule is still enabled, nothing else changed!  I can still connect and monitor those same counters from the SAM server, but SAM is back to "Unknown" on all of them.  So fricking confusing!

Have you tried stopping the Windows Firewall service on that machine and see if that resolves the problem?

As I am sure we both assumed, stopping the firewall did allow the counters to be retrieved.  However, that is not an acceptable solution for me.

Is there a list of what ports the various app templates within SAM require for proper operation?

This is outlined in the Port Requirements Guide below:

http://www.solarwinds.com/documentation/Orion/docs/SolarWindsPortRequirements.pdf

That did it.  I found the following in the document:

Performance Counter Monitor- This monitor uses RPC, requiring the following ports:TCP/135; RPC/named pipes (NP) TCP 139, RPC/NP TCP

445, RPC/NP UDP 137, RPC/NP UDP 138

I created a custom GPO with those firewall inbound rules (TCP 135,139,445 and UDP 137,138).  Actually, all it needed were the first 2 ports, and my server is now all green.  Thanks!

I have the exact same scenario using the same IIS Template.  However, in my situation, we are not running any Firewall between the SolarWinds Server and the IIS Server.  I can successfully telnet to the ports list above.  I've also verified that the counters do exist on the IIS Server and have data.  Anymore ideas?

Thanks

Have you tried restarting the Remote Registry service on the server being monitored to see if that resolves the issue?

Yes, I did attempt that with the same failed results.

My next recommendation would be to open perfmon.exe on the Orion Server, connecting to this remote host and attempting to monitor these performance counters remotely.