Using the System Monitor (PerfMon) with ASP.NET Applications

  • Article

Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1

Unlike traditional Active Server Pages (ASP), which exposed performance counters globally for the entire server computer, most of the ASP.NET performance counters are exposed per application. In the System Monitor tool (PerfMon), per-application counters are available under the ASP.NET Applications performance object. If there are multiple applications on the server, you need to specify a particular application instance when selecting a counter to monitor. However, there is a special __Total__ application instance in PerfMon that aggregates the counter values for all applications on a server. The value of __Total__ is usually a sum of the counter values.

ASP.NET also exposes global-only counters that are not bound to a particular application instance. These counters are located under the ASP.NET performance object.

Procedures

To view the available ASP.NET counters on a computer running Windows Server 2003

  1. From the Start menu, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Performance.

  2. Right-click the System Monitor details pane and click Add Counters.

  3. To monitor any computer on which the monitoring console is run, click Use local computer counters.

    Or, to monitor a specific computer, regardless of where the monitoring console is run, click Select counters from computer and specify a computer name or IP address.

  4. In Performance object, click an object to monitor.

  5. To monitor all counters, click All counters.

    Or, to monitor only selected counters, click Select counters from list and select the counters you want to monitor.

  6. To monitor all instances of the selected counters, click All instances.

    Or, to monitor only selected instances, click Select instances from list and select the instances you want to monitor.

  7. Click Add, and then click OK.

For information about each of the ASP.NET system and ASP.NET application performance counters, see System and Application Performance Counters for ASP.NET.