WMI tutorial - data source

To enable your extension to collect metrics and have those metrics ingested into Dynatrace, you must define a data source. In this tutorial we're using the WMI data source. This must be a section called wmi in your extension.

The purpose of the wmi section is to define the WMI queries that retrieve your metrics, how often they should run, and how to map their results to metrics and dimensions that Dynatrace can ingest. Groups and subgroups are used to organize data and define shared properties like dimensions and running frequency.

For our extension, we're using 3 WMI Queries. We'll add them to our extension.yaml and ingest their result as Dynatrace metrics:

  • Extract CPU Usage, User CPU, and Idle CPU for each of the host's processors (split by CPU ID).

    SELECT Name, PercentProcessorTime, PercentIdleTime, PercentUserTime FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Processor WHERE Name LIKE '_Total'

  • Extract the Total, Sent, and Received Bytes per second for each network adapter running on the host

    SELECT Name, BytesTotalPersec, BytesReceivedPersec, BytesSentPersec FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_Tcpip_NetworkAdapter

  • Extract the Total, Sent, and Received Bytes per second for each network interface running on the host

    SELECT Name, BytesTotalPersec, BytesReceivedPersec, BytesSentPersec FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_Tcpip_NetworkInterface

Tips

Metric best practices

Prefix your metric keys with the name of the extension to avoid clashes with other metrics in Dynatrace. For this exercise, we prefix each metric key with custom.demo.host-observability.

Host dimension

You can identify the host running the extension through the this:device.host passed as a dimension value.

Static dimensions

You can add dimensions that are fixed strings using the prefix const:.

Define your data source

Add the wmi section to your extension.yaml using the template below.

  1. Create two groups called Host and Network that run every 1 min. Both groups should have a dimension that identifies the host running the extension.
  2. Create a subgroup for each WMI query given above and map the columns retrieved to metrics and dimensions.
  3. Add a dimension called network.type that takes the value Adapter or Interface, depending on the WMI query.
  4. Package a new version of your extension and upload it.
  5. Configure it to monitor your Windows host. You can do it during extension activation in Dynatrace Hub.
  6. Give it a minute, and then validate metric collection.

For more information on the WMI data source syntax, see WMI data source reference.

wmi:
  - group: Host
    interval:
      minutes: 1
    dimensions:
      - key: host
        value: this:device.host
    subgroups:
      - subgroup: CPU
        query: SELECT Name, PercentProcessorTime, PercentIdleTime, PercentUserTime FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_PerfOS_Processor WHERE Name LIKE '_Total'
        metrics:
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.host.cpu.time.processor
            value: column:PercentProcessorTime
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.host.cpu.time.idle
            value: column:PercentIdleTime
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.host.cpu.time.user
            value: column:PercentUserTime
        dimensions:
          - key: host.cpu.id
            value: column:Name
  - group: Network
    interval:
      minutes: 1
    dimensions:
      - key: host
        value: this:device.host
    subgroups:
      - subgroup: Adapters
        query: SELECT Name, BytesTotalPersec, BytesReceivedPersec, BytesSentPersec FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_Tcpip_NetworkAdapter
        metrics:
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.persec
            value: column:BytesTotalPersec
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.received.persec
            value: column:BytesReceivedPersec
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.sent.persec
            value: column:BytesSentPersec
        dimensions:
          - key: network.type
            value: const:Adapter
          - key: network.name
            value: column:Name
      - subgroup: Interfaces
        query: SELECT Name, BytesTotalPersec, BytesReceivedPersec, BytesSentPersec FROM Win32_PerfFormattedData_Tcpip_NetworkInterface
        metrics:
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.persec
            value: column:BytesTotalPersec
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.received.persec
            value: column:BytesReceivedPersec
          - key: custom.demo.host-observability.network.bytes.sent.persec
            value: column:BytesSentPersec
        dimensions:
          - key: network.type
            value: const:Interface
          - key: network.name
            value: column:Name

Results

Your six metrics should show up in the Metrics browser. To find them, filter by text custom.demo.

result

Next step: Metric metadata