by Greg Shields

The easiest of today’s solutions for monitoring the IT environment starts with PerfMon. Using PerfMon, you can easily pull up metrics on server performance—focused on memory and processor utilization, context switches, and a full gamut of application-specific statistics.

For example, an installation of SQL Server today will install a large set of PerfMon counters that relate to many of its behaviors. Want to see how many active transactions are currently running through your SQL Server? Pull up the counter for MSSQL$MAPS:TransactionsTransactions. Concerned that a resource governor is creating an excessive queue of requests in a workload group? Check out MSSQL$MAPS:Workload Group SetsQueued Requests.

These metrics are useful because they can be constantly polled by PerfMon when you need answer. The problem is, however, that PerfMon’s mechanism for working with them usually involves first knowing that a problem is already occurring. Unless you actively know that a problem is occurring, you probably aren’t spending your time watching PerfMon all day.

Further, PerfMon counters are only useful when you can apply meaning to their values. You might have a gut feeling that your application is memory bound on a server, but unless you can relate today’s absolute value of Pool Paged Bytes with yesterday’s or the week before, this data does you no good.

That’s why system performance monitoring solutions like Microsoft System Center Operations Manager, EventSentry, and TNT Software ELM Performance Manager, among others, were created. These solutions start by consolidating performance data across each of the systems in your environment. They automatically collect data, storing it into a database for later retrieval and cross-referencing.

Common among these solutions is also the ability to proactively alert you when conditions exist that you don’t like. Consider the earlier situation where an application’s use of memory starts increasing past its usual levels. Solutions like these can alert you of this condition prior to it growing to a level where users are impacted.

Best-in-class options go one step further in that they also provide suggested resolutions along with sets of data. These solutions might suggest restarting a process or adjusting system configurations to prevent the situation from occurring again.

About the Author

Greg Shields is an independent author, speaker, and IT consultant, as well as a Partner and Principal Technologist with Concentrated Technology. With 15 years in information technology, Greg has developed extensive experience in systems administration, engineering, and architecture specializing in Microsoft OS, remote application, systems management, and virtualization technologies. He is a Contributing Editor and columnist for TechNet Magazine and Redmond Magazine, and serves as the Series Editor for Realtime Publishers, the world’s leading provider of high-quality content for the IT market. Greg is a highly sought-after and top-ranked speaker for both live and recorded events, and is seen regularly at conferences like TechMentor Events, Microsoft Tech Ed, VMworld, and more. He is a multiple recipient of Microsoft “Most Valuable Professional” award.