Your Minimum Monitoring Configuration

The minimum performance objects to monitor are those corresponding to the main hardware resources of your system: memory, processors, disks, and network components. Table 5.7 lists the appropriate counters and the categories of information they provide.

Table   5.7 Monitoring the Minimum Objects

Component

Performance aspect being monitored

Counters to monitor

Disk

Usage

LogicalDisk\% Free Space
LogicalDisk\% Disk Time
PhysicalDisk\Disk Reads/sec
PhysicalDisk\Disk Writes/sec
Use diskperf -y to enable disk counters and diskperf -n to disable them. To specify the type of counters you want to activate, include d for physical disk drives and v for logical disk drives or storage volumes. When the operating system starts up, it automatically sets the diskperf command with the -yd switch to activate physical disk counters. Type diskperf -yv to activate logical disk counters. For more information about using the diskperf command, type diskperf -? at the command prompt.
The % Disk Time counter must be interpreted carefully. Because the _Total instance of this counter might not accurately reflect utilization on multiple-disk systems, it is important to use the % Idle Time counter as well. Note that these counters cannot display a value exceeding 100 percent.
For more information about disk performance counters, see "Examining and Tuning Disk Performance" in this book.

Disk

Bottlenecks

LogicalDisk\Avg. Disk Queue Length
PhysicalDisk\Avg. Disk Queue Length (all instances)

Memory

Usage

Memory\Available Bytes
Memory\Cache Bytes
You can also use Memory\Committed Bytes and Memory\Commit Limit to detect problems with virtual memory.

Memory

Bottlenecks or leaks

Memory\Pages/sec
Memory\Page Faults/sec
Memory\Pages Input/sec
Memory\Page Reads/sec
Memory\Transition Faults/sec
Memory\Pool Paged Bytes
Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes
Although not specifically Memory object counters, the following are also useful for memory analysis:
Paging File\% Usage Object (all instances)
Cache\Data Map Hits %
Server\Pool Paged Bytes and Server\Pool Nonpaged Bytes

Network

Usage

Network Segment: % Net Utilization
Note that you need to install the Network Packet Protocol driver for Network Monitor in order to use this counter.

Network

Throughput

Protocol transmission counters (varies with networking protocol); for TCP/IP:
Network Interface\Bytes total/sec
Network Interface\Packets/sec
Server\Bytes Total/sec or Server\Bytes Sent/sec and Server\Bytes Received/sec
You might want to monitor other objects for network and server throughput, as described in "Monitoring Network Performance" in this book..

Processor

Usage

Processor\% Processor Time (all instances)

 

Bottlenecks

System\Processor Queue Length (all instances)
Processor\Interrupts/sec
System\Context switches/sec

If you want to test the limits of your system as part of establishing a baseline, monitor the recommended counters during the following activities:

  • Adding base services

  • Adding connections

  • Running network applications

  • Opening a file

  • Printing a file

  • Copying or writing to a file

  • Accessing a database

  • Sending a message