Using Performance Console

Monitoring system performance enables you to maintain and administer your operating system. You can monitor the system performance over the network with the help of the performance console. Monitoring the system helps you in understanding the effect of the workload on your system resources. It also helps in identifying problem areas and accordingly the administrator can make appropriate changes to improve the performance of the system.

The Window Server 2003 provides with the following tools as part of the performance console:

> System Monitor - Enables you to monitor and measure the performance of your computer or network computers. It enables you to collect and view the real time performance data of the remote computers. It also stores information about the usage of the hardware resources and activities of the system services on computers you are administering.

> Performance Logs and Alerts - Enables you to collect the performance data automatically from local or remote computers. Data collected in the Performance logs and alerts can be easily imported tospreadsheet program as they are collected in comma separated or tab separated format. Performance log is divided into as follows:

• Logs: Displays information, which the application, services or operating system generates. There are two types of logs, counter and trace. Counter logs displays the information about the hardware usage and activities of the system services of local and remote computer. Trace logs displays information about the activities, such as, disk input/output activity. This information helps to know the performance of the system.

• Alerts: Displays information about the logs when the counter value rises or falls below the specified limit.

To monitor the performance of the computer you can add a counter. You can view the required system information by adding counter.

To monitor the performance of a computer:

1. Select Start > Control Panel > Administrative Tools > Performance. The Performance console appears.

The System Monitor details pane displays the performance of the selected computer. The details of the graph are displayed below the graph. The details table displays the real-time data about memory usage in terms of pages/sec, physical disk usage in terms of average disk queue length and percentage processor time.

2. Right-click the System monitor. A shortcut menu appears.

3. Select Add Counters. The Add Counters dialog box appears.

The options available in the Add Counters dialog box are:

> Use local computer counter - Enables you to view the performance of the local computer.

> Select counter from computer - Enables you to select computer to view the performance.

> Performance object - Enables you to select performance object.Performance object represents the collection of the counters that are associated with a resources or service that can be monitored. Counter refers to data reporting item.

> All Counters - Enables you to select all the counters.

> Select Counters from the list - Enables to select the required counter.

> All instances - Displays all the instances of the counter. Instances refer to one or more occurrences of a counter.

> Select instances from the list - Enables to select the required instances. The Total displays the selected instance. It represents the combined data from the multiple instances of a counter when multiple instances are available. A '0' is displayed in the text box when there is only one instance of the counter. It will display ‘1 when there two processes on the system.

> Add - Enables you to add the counter to view the performance.

> Explain - Explains the counter that you have selected.

4. Select Select Counter from the list option and select the counter from the drop-down list.

5. Select the required object from the Performance object drop-down list.

6. Select the required counters from the Select the counters from the list drop-down list.

7. Select All instances check box to display all the counter instances that are available when system monitor is in use.

8. Click Add. The Performance console appears with the selected counter.