Filtering Azure Applications in SCOM 2012 Performance Views

Okay, so you now have your shiny, new installation of SCOM 2012 up and running. You have migrated your old Windows Azure management pack using the Visual Studio Authoring Extensions for Visual Studio 2010, using techniques from my previous post here. You have created some new Performance views based on the now shipping SCOM 2012 Management Pack for Windows Azure found here. But now you realize that whereas with SCOM 2007 R2, you could filter your performance views based on role instance, as seen below.

With SCOM 2012, you see the following instead. Where are the individual role instances? Unfortunately, they’re not there any longer based on the operation of the new SCOM 2012 Management Pack for Windows Azure. Yes, I have asked the Program Manager of the management pack team to restore this functionality, so we’ll see how it goes. For now, though, we will have to find an alternate way to create a performance view targeted towards a specific Azure application. We will accomplish this with groups. Groups are an important feature in SCOM in that they provide you the flexibility to create various types of views by grouping together logical collections of objects. You can use groups to secure views by user role, or you can also specify subgroups, or even exclude objects from a given group. Not all groups, however, will necessarily apply to your Windows Azure applications.

So here is our starting point with a Performance view that displays memory performance for all applications within a given subscription.

Click on the Authoring view, and select the Groups node, as seen below. Right-click on the Groups node and select Create a new group… from the popup menu, which will display the Group creation wizard.

On the first page type a name for the application(s) that you want to group together in your Performance view. Select a management pack in which to store this monitor. Select the Next button when done.

On the Choose Members from a List wizard page, select the Add/Remove Objects… button, which will present a dialog for choosing objects that will be the members of this group.

In the dialog, use the filter to find and add the applications you would like to monitor in this Performance view. You can add each to the list box at the bottom using the Add button, as seen below.

Go ahead and skip through the Create a Membership Formula and Choose Optional Subgroups wizard pages until you reach the Specify Exclude List dialog, as seen below. Choose the Create button.

You should now see your group in the list, as below.

Now head back to the Monitoring view, as seen below. Right-click on your Performance view and select the Properties item in the popup menu, as seen below.

In the Properties dkalog, select the ellipsis button (…) under the Show data contained in a specific group: heading.

You will now see a dialog that will allow you to search through objects and select one, as seen below.

Type in a portion of the text of the group you created previously, as seen below. Select your group and then select the OK button.

You’re now back to the original Properties dialog. Select the OK button.

You should now see your Performance view is properly filtered.

We’re all done. See you next time, when we will cover how to filter Event logs.