MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION
PERFORMANCE MONITOR AND NETWORK MONITOR
PERFORMANCE
MONITOR
Windows NT Object Counters in Performance Monitor
OBJECT
PURPOSE
Cache L2 cache performance
Logical disk Mass storage
performance, including network storage
Memory Memory performance and
usage
Objects Process and tread counts
Paging file Virtual memory
usage
Physical disk HD performance
Process Performance
of executing processes
Processor Processor(s)
performance
System Windows NT
performance
Thread Individual thread performance
You
will also see objects for each network service installed.
MONITORING FOR
PROCESSOR BOTTLENECKS
MAJOR PROCESSOR RELATED COUNTERS TO
WATCH:
Processor: %Processor Time - How busy the microprocessor is.
Processor is a bottleneck if sustained >80%
Processor: Interrupts/sec
- Rate of service requests from peripheral devices. If you have a high rate of
interrupts/sec with no corresponding hardware functions then you may have a bad
piece of hardware. Should be between 100 and 1000. Spikes to 2000 are
ok.
System: Processor queue length - Number of threads waiting to be
serviced. >2 then processor is a bottleneck. Queue length will always be zero
unless you are also monitoring a thread specific counter (Context switches/sec
is number of threads switched/sec by the processor and is good to
use).
MONITORING THE DISK FOR BOTTLENECKS
IF THE DISK LIGHT IS ON
ALL THE TIME, YOU NEED MORE RAM
More Ram will increase the size of the
disk cache and decrease page swapping to disk and will increase the apparent
speed of the disk.
Logical disk vs. Physical disk
Two different
objects in Performance monitor.
Logical disk measures performance of
stripe sets, volume sets and mapped network drives.
Physical disk
measures real transfers to and from actual hard disk or RAID set. Used to
compare disks and to provide specific information about a disk.
MAJOR
DISK RELATED COUNTERS TO WATCH:
Memory: Pages/sec shows the number of
memory pages swapped out to disk per second. Useful with %disk time: modify the
size of the page file and watch the result of these two disk counters.
%Disk
time does not directly measure the disk. It shows how much time the processor is
spending servicing disk requests. Use with Processor: %Processor Time to
determine if the disk is eating up the processor.
Disk bytes per second
shows how fast your disk is. Copy a big file and see if your disk is way fast or
a piece of junk.
Average disk bytes per transfer shows how big the
average transfer is. Larger transfers are more efficient.
Current Disk
queue length shows how much data is waiting to be transferred to disk. A long
queue means you need a faster disk.
NOTE: You must enable disk counters,
they are disabled by default and will cause a degradation of about 2% in
performance due to processor load of the counter.
To enable disk
performance counters: type diskperf -y at the command prompt to enable auto
counter startup at boot. Reboot.
To disable disk performance counters:
type diskperf -n at the command prompt to disable auto counter startup at boot.
Reboot.
NETWORK MONITOR
Is a trimmed down version of what ships
with SMS.
Is installed by adding Network monitor tools and agent through
the services tab of the network icon in control panel.
Can provide real
time and cumulative saved data.
FOUR MAIN SECTIONS
Bar graph in
real time.
Session statistics shows cumulative data about conversations
taking place on the network in real time.
Station statistics shows
information on each conversation. You must specify the machine (station) you
want to monitor and is cumulative for the monitoring period.
Summary
statistics are cumulative and show network, captured, per second, NIC (MAC), and
NIC error statistics.
Data can be filtered by protocol, computer address,
or protocol properties. Filter by computer address to identify a NIC sending
data frames when not in use (bad NIC).
Netmon can be dual password
protected and will let you identify other instances of Netmon running on the
network. This is to prevent unauthorized users from capturing data to which they
do not have permission to access.
??? Conflict ???
Sybex Network
Press: MCSE NT Server 4 Study Guide says, "The limited version of network
monitor that ships with Windows NT Server does not support promiscuous mode.
Therefore, it can capture only packets sent to the server or to all
stations."
But...
Windows NT Online Help for Performance Monitor
says, The Nework Monitor agent collects statistics from the computer’s network
adapter card by putting it in promiscuous mode."