Overview of Performance Monitoring

Regular performance monitoring ensures that you always have up-to-date information about how your computer is operating. When you have performance data for your system over a range of activities and loads, you can define a baseline — a range of measurements that represent acceptable performance under typical operating conditions. This baseline provides a reference point that makes it easier to spot problems when they occur. In addition, when you are troubleshooting system problems, performance data gives you information about the behavior of system resources at the time the problem occurs, which is useful in pinpointing the cause. Finally, monitoring system performance provides you with data to project future growth and to plan for how changes in your system configurations might affect future operation. Figure 27.1 shows the sequence for monitoring different system resources.

Figure 27.1 Overall Monitoring Sequence

The following sections describe the scope and type of performance data collected, the design of the performance data architecture, and the methods of data collection used by the performance tools.