Using the “check_nrpe” plugin we can use Opsview to monitor Microsoft “Performance counters”, which are part of most Microsoft software.

2. Monitoring Microsoft Performance
Counters in Opsview
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3. Introduction
This presentation takes you through the steps required to
monitor Microsoft Performance Counters in Opsview.
If you don’t already have Opsview installed, visit our website and
download Opsview Core (free), Opsview Pro (30 day trial) or
request a trial to Opsview Enterprise.
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4. Introduction
• Using the “check_nrpe” plugin we can use Opsview to
monitor Microsoft “Performance counters”, which are
part of most Microsoft software.
• In our example, we are going to monitor performance
counters built into Microsoft Exchange 2010.
• To do this, we must first search for which counters we
wish to monitor - they will be similar to this example:
“MSExchangeIS Mailbox(_Total)Messages Queued for
Submission” found from the link here.
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5. Pre-requisites
• In this example scenario, we are monitoring performance
counters for Microsoft Exchange 2010, which is installed
on a Windows Server 2008 system with the Opsview
agent pre-installed, and the host already added to the
Opsview monitoring system.
• After finding the counters we wish to add, we will need
to create our new service check(s) to apply to our pre-
configured Microsoft Exchange host on our Opsview
server.
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6. Configuration
• To create the new service checks, navigate to “SETTINGS
-> SERVICE CHECKS” and click on the green plus icon in
the top left and fill the template out as normal, i.e.
name/description, etc. Now, the crux of this article. In
the plugins drop down, choose “check_nrpe” and then in
the arguments field, enter the following:
-H $HOSTADDRESS$ -c nsc_checkcounter -a '"MSExchangeIS
Mailbox(_Total)Messages Queued for Submission" MaxWarn=10
MaxCrit=50 ShowAll‘
NB: Please note, the counter name is wrapped in double
quotation marks, and the whole string after “-a” is wrapped
in single quotation marks.
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7. Configuration
• Another very important note regarding a known
issue, (this will trip up most people), due to the special
character handling done in the service check arguments
box, we need to enter DOUBLE back slashes. So in the
counter, it may be “…(_Total)Messages…” but we need
to enter “…(_Total)Messages”, in order for Opsview to
run it correctly. Otherwise it will complain about not
being able to find that counter. If you run it from the CLI
however, it will work with single backslashes as there is
no special character handling done in bash
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8. Configuration
• Once you have added the arguments, click “SUBMIT” and
your new service check will be available like so:
• Now we need to apply the service check to our Exchange
server. To do this, navigate to “SETTINGS > HOSTS” and
click on the Exchange host. Then, we need to navigate to
“MONITORS” and select our new service check, as below:
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9. Configuration
• Finally, we need to click “SUBMIT” at the bottom of the
page, and then apply our new service check via
“SETTINGS > APPLY CHANGES” and click “RELOAD
CONFIGURATION”.
• Once this is done, our new service check is up and
running against our Exchange server, as below:
• We are also monitoring “messages queued for
submission” too, along with many other counters for
Exchange, however the counters can be taken from any
Microsoft application which utilises them.
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10. About Opsview
Opsview delivers a single unified view of the health of all your
distributed physical, virtual and hybrid cloud systems.
We give DevOps staff all the tools they need to get their jobs done faster, easier and
for less.
• Opsview Enterprise offers large enterprises (+100 devices) and MSPs a
certified, professionally supported system with enhanced functionality such as
dynamic dashboards and reports
• SMEs looking for feature-rich dashboards to monitor the performance of their on-
premise, virtualized or cloud apps choose Opsview Pro
• Opsview Core is our free, open source monitoring tool - you can test and
customize it how you want
www.opsview.com
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