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.

Hi

You can create a custom rule to gather information you want from a log file and create a property bag which will be saved in operations manager's database. However, this is not as simple as you think. You have to know a good knowledge about management packs and creating them. After creaing this rule you can have a dashboard for example a web dashboard to show the information.

Also you can use powershell grid widget which CyrAz told in last comment. 

• Marked as answer by rajdude2 Monday, March 02, 2015 2:41 PM

Thanks for the tip. The powershell grid widget is pretty powerful. However it will take me quite some time and effort to write a PS script which can extract the exact info I need from that application's log file. I was hoping SCOM's own log parsing capabilities would do it.

By the way, yes, we can create a MP and have only one server in it. We can use the (free)  MPAuthor to make a MP with only one server in it. Here is a video showing how to do it...

http://www.silect.com/static/mpauthor/MP_Author_Creating_a_New_Single_Server_Application_MP.mp4

I tried doing what I want using MPAuthor, but it again boiled down to me writing a PS script which can extract the exact info I need from that application's log file.

Thanks for your tips.

At this point I am going to abandon this effort. The application developer told me that the same information which is being written to the log file is also being written to the Oracle DB.

Now I want to create a dashboard widget which runs a script which queries the Oracle DB and shows the result. That may be simpler than trying to write a PS script which can extract the exact info I need from that application's log file.

Plus I have DBAs here who will help me with the SQL query :-)