Performance Monitor: The Basics
Performance Monitor: The Basics, System Monitor, Performance Logs,
Counter / Trace Logs, Alerts, Baseline, Tracking Processes, Monitor System
Resources, Server Tuning
This is the first in a
series of articles that will cover Performance Monitor.
Performance Monitor is a tool that has been included in
Windows servers since NT4. It is a utility that includes:
- System Monitor
- Performance
Logs comprising:
- Alerts
The Performance Monitor is very useful in getting a handle on how your
server is performing by:
- Creating a baseline
- Tracking
processes
- Monitoring system resources
- Assisting in server
tuning
- Planning upgrades
- Detecting bottlenecks
- And identifying performance problems
In this article I will discuss creating a baseline
for your computer system. Baselines are useful in giving
administrators a starting point from which to examine a
server. By having a baseline that shows how a server is
performing during normal operation at the beginning of its
life, we can then refer back to this in the future after
usage has grown, configurations have changed, to test how
changes effect performance, etc.
Performance Monitor: Establish a Baseline
When creating a baseline, the process to will vary from
server to server, depending on the services the system is
offering. You start by opening Performance Monitor,
expanding Performance Logs and Alerts, right clicking on
Counter Logs, selecting New Log Settings and then naming the
log.
You will need to know what services the server is running, such
as Exchange, SharePoint, DHCP, DNS, etc. After identifying
the services being provided by the server, select the key
performance counters that will reflect server usage and add
them to the log.
Performance Monitor: Adding Counters to Your Baseline
Common baseline counters include:
- Pages Per Second
- Percent
Processor Time
- Average Disk Queue Length
Those will
show how many times per second the system faults to disk to
read or write page faults. Some of the more advanced
counters available include:
- Excessive Page Faults - indicates a shortage of physical
memory where the system is using the paging file often and slowing
memory read/writes by accessing the hard disk instead of much faster
physical memory
- Percent Processor Time - shows processor utilization and should
normally be less than 85 percent on average. If processor percent
time constantly shows near or at 100 percent, the system will start to show speed degradation as the processor(s) struggle to keep up.
- Average Disk Queue Length - shows the average number of read and
write requests that were queued for the selected disk. Large disk
queues indicate the hard drive access is too slow and should be
upgraded by replacing it with a faster disk or moving to or
upgrading a disk array.
- Other useful counters could include, but are not limited to:
- Current Bandwidth of the Network Interface(s)
- Paging File Usage
- Percent Processor Time of Specific Processes
- Page Faults for Specific Processes
- Counters specific to software such as Exchange and
SharePoint.
To Add Counters to Your Baseline:
- Click Add Counters
- Select Performance Object (the broad category of monitored items
such as Memory, Processor, etc.)
- Select the specific counter under the Performance Object.
Performance Monitor: Choose How Information is Stored
When creating a baseline you must choose how to
store the information. It can be stored as either:
- A binary
file
- Stored in an SQL database
- Comma delimited text file
- Tab delimited text file
- Or a binary circular file.
The most
common storage methods are the binary file or SQL database.
Performance Monitor: Sampling Intervals
You must also take into account your sampling interval when
creating the baseline. The more often the data is sampled,
the more detail is gathered about the server.
The downside
to this is the more often data is sampled the larger the
file grows, the more of a performance hit the server takes,
and an increase in network traffic if the data is being
stored on another system.
Performance Monitor: Easy Access to Baseline Via System
Monitor Function
After creating the baseline, it can be accessed
anytime via the System Monitor in Performance Monitor.
Simply click the View Log Data button along the top and
select the log from file or SQL database.
After you have
loaded the data you can add counters to the display.
You will be able to select and deselect only those counters you logged. You
add the counters to your display by clicking the Add button and then
selecting Performance Object (the broad category of monitored items such as
Memory, Processor, etc.) and then selecting the specific counter under the
Performance Object.
Now that you know how to create the original
Baseline, you can use the same steps to create future logs
and compare logs.
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