Fun with KHI and Performance Monitor

A few weeks ago I wrote a post basically saying that the Lync Stress Tool was worthless. In it I said you should really monitor the progress of your Lync deployment using Performance Monitor. I also pointed to the Key Health Indicators  that Microsoft recommends you use to monitor your Lync installs. Heck, they even have a script to easily install the KHI Data Collector Set into Performance Monitor for you.

As we built our Lync 2013 servers, we installed the KHI Data Collector Set on each server as part of our standard build process. As we have about 40 Lync servers it’s a pain to go back to 40 servers and update the KHI Data Collector Set configuration. For example, we want to change the logging directory off of our c: drive and to the e: drive. We’d also like to launch the performance monitor collection every so often, have it run for a week, and then stop. Manually starting Performance Monitor on 40 servers? This is where PowerShell comes in.

I cobbled together a script to change the settings of the KHI Data Collector Set in Performance Monitor. If the KHI Data Collector Set was not installed on the server, the script installs it. After updating (or installing) the KHI Data Collector Set, it starts it on all of the servers. This is a total time saver. I won’t shar the entire script here because I copied the entire Microsoft-written KHI script and buried it into mine. Copyright, plagiarism, etc.

But I will give you enough information to build your own script.

At the top of the script is this:

$arrServers=import-csv e:\scriptsservers.csv

This reads in a simple list of all of the servers I want to manipulate. Set the Header in the file to “ServerName”.

Next, I pasted in the two functions at the top of the Microsoft Script. I edited the CreateDataCollector function to look like this:

Function CreateDataCollector
{
Write-Host -ForegroundColor Green "Creating Lync Server 2013 KHI Data Collector on $($server.ServerName)..."

Invoke-Expression "logman.exe create counter KHI -o e:PerflogsKHI_$($server.ServerName) -f csv -si 15 -v mmddhhmm -cf .LyncServer2013KHIs.config -s $($server.ServerName)"
Remove-Item .\LyncServer2013KHIs.config
}

I edited the Write-Host line to properly display the Server name as it comes from the text file we are using. I then deleted a few lines and built my own Invoke-Expression command. Note that in this one I am slipping in the server name into the name of the logfile. I am also pointng th elogfile to an e:Perflogs directory.

The CreateKHIsTextFile function is left unchanged.

And then after those 2 functions is the code I cobbled together.

Function StartKHI
{
 $datacollectorset.Query("KHI", $Server.Servername)
#Change alread-installed KHI Collector set to log to e: drive instead of default c: drive
 Invoke-Expression "logman.exe update KHI -o e:PerflogsKHI_$($Server.ServerName) -b 5/1/2014 17:00:00 -e 5/8/2014 17:00:00 -s $($Server.ServerName)"
#Start the Collector Set
 $datacollectorset.Start($false);
}

foreach ($Server in $arrServers)
{
 Write-host "Working on" $Server.ServerName "..." -ForegroundColor Green

 $datacollectorset = New-Object -COM Pla.DataCollectorSet;
 try
 {
#If the collector set is not already installed, it errors. If no error, start the collector
 StartKHI
 }
 catch
 {
#Starting the collector crashed, so it's probably not installed. Install it, then start it.
 write-host ("KHI counters not installed on {0}" -f $Server.ServerName) -ForegroundColor Green
 write-host "Installing...." -ForegroundColor Green
 CreateKHIsTextFile
 CreateDataCollector
 StartKHI
 }
}
 

I’ll assume you are fairly well versed in PowerShell. So let me point out the one bit of creativity I had to use. No value is returned by the  “$datacollectorset.Query(“KHI”, $Server.Servername)” call. Instead, it returns nothing if it worked. If it fails it lows up and scrawls PowerShell blood all over your screen. So the way to tell if the KHI is already installed or not is to use a Try/Catch construct. If the try works, it starts the KHI Data Collector successfully. If it fails, then I assume that the KHI Data Collectors haven’t been installed. So I call the Microsoft-written (and slightly edited by me) functions to install it. Once those are done, I go ahead and start the Data Collector.

So using this script, I am able to either install the KHI Data Collectors or to update them with values I want. If you look at the Invoke-Expression line in the StartKHI function, I use the -b and -e parameters. This sets a begin and end time for the collector to run. In this case it is one week. You will probably have to edit this before running your copy.

Below is a short script to stop the Data Collector Set. It’s useful when testing.

$arrServers=import-csv e:scriptsservers.csv

foreach ($Server in $arrServers)
{
 Write-host "Working on" $Server.ServerName "..." -ForegroundColor Green

 try
 {
 $datacollectorset = New-Object -COM Pla.DataCollectorSet;
 $datacollectorset.Query("KHI", $Server.ServerName);
 $datacollectorset.Stop($false);
 }
 catch
 {
 write-host "KHI counters already stopped on $($Server.ServerName)" -ForegroundColor Green
 }
}

In the above you don’t really have to use the Try/Catch. It’s just to make things prettier (i.e., less PowerShell blood).

So if you cobble the full script together, you can install the KHI Data Collector set, edit its settings, and start and stop the collector. Pretty useful, especially if you have a lot of servers. Now the next challenge: What do you do with 40 servers-worth of logs?