Kicking the tires with Perfmon in Server 2008
Tuesday, December 16, 2008 12:35 PM
Over the years, there have been few changes in how we measure Windows performance. Windows Server 2008 introduces a new key functionality to the Perfmon tool.
No matter what the screen's title bar has labeled through the years, Perfmon is one of the most important tools a Windows administrator can have at their disposal. Windows Server 2008 brings new features to the table, while still providing the same counter functionality you are accustomed to using for troubleshooting and administering Windows servers.
Here is a list of some of the key new functionality of the Windows Reliability And Performance Monitor (I'm still going to call it Perfmon) in Windows Server 2008.
Data Collector Set: This is a template of sorts of collector elements that you can frequently reuse. This makes it easy to compare the same collectors over different timeframes.
Reports: Perfmon now offers reports that provide graphic representations of a collector set's captured information. This gives you a quick snapshot so you can compare system performance as recorded in the timeframe and with the selected counters.
In this report, you can perform some basic manipulations to change display, highlight certain elements of the report, and export the image to a file. Figure A shows a Perfmon report.
Figure A
Reliability Monitor: Perfmon now provides the System Stability Index (SSI) for a monitored system. This is another visual tool that you can use to identify when issues occur in a timeline fashion. It can be beneficial to see when a series of issues occurred, and if they went away or increased in frequency.
Wizard-based configuration: Counters can now be made up using a wizard interface. This can be beneficial when managers or other non-technical people may need access to development or proof-of-concept systems for basic performance information. Further, the security model per object can allow delegated permissions to make this easier to manage.
To get to Perfmon, you can still just run it from a prompt. The standard user access control (UAC) irritation applies to this console, but otherwise, getting there is easy.
For more information about Perfmon, visit the TechNet Web site.
TechNet forum for Perfmon
Introducing a new TechNet forum for perfmon. social.technet.microsoft.com...
Posted by anonymous on Saturday, March 21 2009 05:45 AM