Performance is a basis for measuring
how fast application and system tasks are completed on a computer, and
reliability is a basis for measuring system operation. How reliable a
system is will be based on whether it regularly operates at the level
at which it was designed to perform. Based on these descriptions, it
should be easy to recognize that performance and reliability monitoring
are crucial aspects in the overall availability and health of a Windows
Server 2012 infrastructure. To ensure maximum uptime, a
well-thought-through process needs to be put in place to monitor,
identify, diagnose, and analyze system performance. This process should
invariably provide a means for quickly comparing system performances at
varying instances in time and detecting and potentially preventing a
catastrophic incident before it causes system downtime.
Performance Monitor, which is an MMC snap-in,
provides a number of tools for administrators that enable them to
conduct real-time system monitoring, examine system resources, collect
performance data, and create performance reports from a single console.
This tool is literally a combination of three legacy Windows Server
monitoring tools: System Monitor, Performance Monitor, and Server
Performance Advisor. However, new features and functionalities have
been introduced to shake things up, including data collector sets,
Resource view, scheduling, diagnostic reporting, and wizards and
templates for creating logs. To launch the Performance Monitor MMC
snap-in tool, select Server Manager or type perfmon.msc at a command prompt.
The Performance Monitor MMC snap-in consists the following elements:
• Overview screen
• Performance Monitor
• Data collector sets
• Report generation
The upcoming sections further explore these major elements of the Performance Monitoring tool.
1. Performance Monitor Overview
The first area of interest in the Performance
Monitor snap-in is the Overview of Performance Monitor screen, also
known as the Performance icon. It is displayed as the home page in the
central details pane when the Performance Monitor tool is invoked.
The Overview of Performance Monitor screen
presents holistic, real-time graphical illustrations of a Windows
Server 2012 system’s CPU usage, disk usage, network usage, and memory
usage, as displayed in Figure 1.
Figure 1. Viewing the Overview of Performance Monitor screen.
Additional process-level details can be
viewed to better understand your system’s current resource usage by
reviewing subsections beneath each metric being displayed. For example,
the Memory section includes % Committed Bytes in Use, Available Mbytes,
and Cache Faults/sec.
The Overview of Performance Monitor
screen is the first level of defense when there is a need to get a
quick overview of a system’s resources. If quick diagnosis of an issue
cannot be achieved, an administrator should leverage the additional
tools within Performance Monitor. These are covered in the upcoming
sections.
