One wrong counter makes PerfTap stop sending data

[DanielLuning]

In PerfTap\CounterDefinitions\sqlserver.counters the counter \Process(msmdsrv)% Processor Time results in an error, I dont' have that process running (SQL Server 2008). This results in that PerfTap stops sending all metrics. I don't see any errors in the log but PerfTap refuses to respond when I try to stop the service.

Two features would be nice to have here:

• PerfTap should skip counters returning errors and continue to send the rest.
• The non working counter should be logged so that it can be fixed in config file.

[Iristyle]

Sorry that I didn't catch this message earlier.

I will try to fix this and your other posted issue today. I had separated out the parsing code into a new library a while back (NanoTube). PerfTap just leverages that library in the latest code -- but I never bundled that up for download because I didn't have a chance to test it at the time to make sure it completely worked.

IIRC, non-working counters should not be considered an issue any more based on the new code -- but I will ensure that's the case. I will have to think about your logging suggestion. Obviously you only want the bad counter logged once when the service starts, rather than every time it's read. So implementing that may be a little tricky.

Thanks for the feedback!

[DanielLuning]

Great to hear that you have time (and interest) to improve this, sorry that I don't have the skills to chip in. The tool is really good and it have been worth the time to work around these smaller issues.

It would be very helpful if it could try out the configured counters during startup and report on those that fail. Some users probably would want it to periodically retry (like in the scenario with counters for services that could be on or off) but for me its enough if I can get a pointer to errors I have done in the config.