Hello everyone,

I need a little guidance on how to solve this problem in SCOM 2012 R2.

I need SCOM to do this:

1. Read a log file on a specific application server (say its hostname is server21)
2. Look for the text: Total number of users: 15
3. Display the text Users on Server21 =  15 on a SCOM dashboard (or something to that effect)

Sounds simple enough? Well, I am stumped :-( I have read and followed tutorials on internet, telling me how to create a rule and alerts. However I dont want alerts. I want this data to be simply shown on a dashboard.

How can I do that?

PS: I hear that I may have to create my own management pack with only server21 in it. Is that right?

I don't see any straight way to achieve this with "core" rules/monitors/templates.

What you could do to achieve something similar would be to create a powershell grid widget with a script that would read and parse your text file. See here for examples : http://ok-sandbox.com/2014/05/scom-powershell-grid-widget-mere-mortals/

Also there is no such thing as "creating a management pack with only one server in it", this is not how it works.