Advisor Data Collection Details
The System Center Advisor agent collects data about your environment from the following locations:
Windows Registry
Windows WMI calls
SQL OleDB queries
Windows event log
Error logs generated by supported workloads
Agent error logs
This data is analyzed for any issues or deviations from defined best practices. If any are identified, alerts are generated to help you resolve the issues. This data is also used to provide configuration information for the computers in your environment. You can view the configuration on either the Configuration: Current Snapshot or Configuration: Change History pages.
The specific data that is collected is determined by configuration information sent to the agent from Advisor. Every 24 hours, the on-premise software queries Advisor for updates to the configuration. The gateway server automatically downloads this content and stores it to be picked up by the agent.
The following sections provide additional information about the data.
What data is collected?
The full list of data points collected by the agent is available for download here, from the Microsoft Download Center, in an Excel spreadsheet.
For example, included in this list are properties about SQL Server like data from SERVERPROPERTY, sys.databases, and sys.configurations.
In addition to this list of data points, we collect some diagnostic data from event logs to help identify any problems with the Advisor on-premise software.
How the data is stored and sent to Advisor
The agent stores the collected information in a set of XML files on the local disk. You can open and audit these files. See View the Data that is sent to System Center Advisor for more information.
Every 24 hours, the xml files are packaged into a compressed CAB file and copied to the gateway. The gateway then securely uploads the CAB file to your Advisor account.
See Also
Tasks
View the Data that is sent to System Center Advisor
Upload Data to System Center Advisor