Performance Console

• Supports gathering more detailed information than

Task Manager
• Consists of two different tools:
• System Monitor
• View data gathered from counter objects
• Performance Logs and Alerts
• Periodically logs samples to a data file to be
imported into other applications
• Generates alerts when certain configured thresholds
are met
2
 System Monitor
• Particularly useful for collecting data on real-time
server performance
• Tasks that can be performed using System
Monitor:
• Understanding server performance
• Problem diagnosis
• Capacity planning
• Testing
• You can specify a type of data to monitor, the
source or computer from which to capture data,
and performance objects to monitor
3
 Using System Monitor
• Displays information when Performance tool is
first opened
• Data display related to memory, processor, and
physical disk objects on local computer
• Three possible views
• Graphs
• Histogram
• Report
• System Monitor toolbar used to control various
functions
4
Using System Monitor
(continued)

5
 Exploring System Monitor
Settings
• Objective: To explore System Monitor settings for
Windows Server 2003
• Open the Performance console to see System
Monitor running
• Use the toolbar to change view types
• Change the view to highlight a particular property
• Explore freezing the display

6
System Monitor Settings
(continued)

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System Monitor Settings (continued)

8
 Performance Objects and Counters

• Performance monitoring is a regular maintenance

task
• Performance counters:
• % processor time
• % interrupt time
• Pages/second
• Page faults/second
• % disk time
• Avg. disk queue length

9
 Adding Counters to System Monitor

• Objective: To add object counters to the System

Monitor tool
• Add several counters
• Explore the Explain feature
• Explore different views

10
Activity 11-5 (continued)

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 Using System Monitor (continued)

• Collecting data is easy, interpreting data is harder

• Often there are causal relationships that aren’t
obvious
• Several alternatives for saving and viewing
historical data
• Html files
• Log files
• Databases

12
 Configuring Alerts
• Logging increases overhead on a server
• Set up a regular schedule for collecting and
reviewing data
• Since logging should not run constantly, alerts can
notify you of a potential problem

13
Configuring Alerts (continued)

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Configuring Performance Logs
and Alerts
• Objective: To explore configuring performance
logging and alerts
• Open Performance Logs and Alerts
• View the System Overview log
• Explore the Log Files and Schedules tab
• Configure alerts and monitor performance

15
 Configuring and Managing
Services
• Don’t want to run unnecessary services, adds
overhead to a system
• Before disabling a service, check dependencies
• Services MMC allows you to configure various
settings under the properties of a service with
following tabs
• General
• Log On
• Recovery
• Dependencies

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Configuring Windows Server 2003
Services
• Open the Remote Desktop Help Session Manager
and configure it to start automatically
• Objective: To configure the startup properties and
settings of Windows Server 2003 services
• Open the Services MMC
• Explore the General, Log On,Recovery and
Dependencies tabs
• Open the Messenger service and disable it

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(continued)

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(continued)

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 Summary
• System Monitor allows you to track many different performance
measures locally and remotely and provides different views of the
measures
• Performance Logs and Alerts allows you to automatically log
performance information based on start and stop times or on alert
configurations
• Information can be saved in different formats including SQL database,
comma-separated, tab-separated, etc.
• To optimize server performance, unnecessary services and
applications should be disabled – some run by default when server
is installed
• Check Dependencies before disabling a service

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