Consolidate several performance counter objects to one in a performance rule in SCOM

Creating a performance counter rule is fairly easy using the Select button to get the object and counter. However, some “systems” create a new performance counter for each of a given object.

One of these systems is SQL and the Buffer Manager object. This object is created for each instance you are running on a SQL server, as shown below with my instances:

So, if you have five instances on a server you don’t want to create a performance rule five times with different names (at least I assume so). To avoid this you can use wildcards for selecting all objects containing this name. When selecting the Buffer Manager object I get the following:

Simply change MSSQL$MYNEWINSTANCE:Buffer Manager to *Buffer Manager to get all instances:

Aaaand there you go, both instances are shown right away:

Happy performance counter rule’ing!