When connected to a server for monitoring the counters appear to be grayed out or not available.
Account that Diagnostic Console is open with is not a Local Administrator on the Server being monitored and/or does not have all of the required permissions to monitor the server
Confirm that the Account running the Diagnostic Console meets the requirements to monitor a server.
For example, when Monitoring a Exchange 2010 Server, the account running the console must be a Local Administrator on the Exchange 2010 server being monitored as well as be a member of the View-Only Exchange Administrators group.
If you're able to see the Exchange Counters that are grayed out remotely through Microsofts Performance Monitor (perfmon) then Spotlight will be able to retrieve them.
Another Example for Exchange 2010 is if "Clients | MAPI is grayed out", then the remote counter to add in Perfmon from the Spotlight server to the Exchange Server is:
MSExchange RpcClientAccess\User Count
Note: To find the perfmon counter that Spotlight is trying to access, right-click the grayed out object in the Diagnostic Console and click "Metrics..."
If you cannot find these counters when connected remotely to the Exchange Server using Perfmon, then Spotlight also will not. Sometimes, the issue with the counters not showing up natively in perfmon is as simple as the Windows Firewall being enabled on the Exchange Server, Windows Registry not running, or a problem with WMI. These are just suggestions of what you could look for. Any further native troubleshooting outside of Spotlight on Messaging would need to be conducted with Microsoft Support to figure out why those counters are not available remotely through the Performance Monitor (perfmon) snap-in.
For a detailed list of permissions required for the Spotlight on Messaging Diagnostic Console to function correctly on all other plug-ins including Exchange 2003,2007, Blackberry and Microsoft Lync please see the Spotlight on Messaging Deployment Guide under their section.
