Lab 8 – Performance Monitoring

In this lab you will use the Event Viewer to analyze what is happening on your server and use the Performance Monitor to view data about how your server is performing.

This lab should take approximately 50 minutes to complete.

1.0 Using Event Viewer

  1. Boot Server1 and login as the domain administrator.
  2. Open Computer Management and expand the Event Viewer on the left pane, then expand Windows Logs. Select the System log. The contents of this log should appear on the detail pane. Scroll through the System log to see some of the logged events. You will likely see Information, Warning and Error events.
  3. Click one of the Error events (red circle with an !), and review the details of the event.

    These System events can help you determine what is happening on your server. Service failures and problems with roles will be shown here and can often give you enough information to help you troubleshoot problems. Error codes can often be looked up online.

1.1 Filtering the logs to make them easier to read

  1. Right-click on the System log in the left pane and select Filter Current Log from the menu. The Filter Content Log dialog box appears.
  2. In the Event Level area, select the Critical, Warning and Error  checkboxes. Click OK.

1.2 Create a Custom View

  1. Right-click on the Windows Logs in the left pane and select Create Custom View. The Create Custom view dialog box appears.
  2. In the Logged drop-down list, select last 7 days. In the Event Level area select the Critical, Warning and Error checkboxes.
  3. Leave the By log option selected and in the Event logs drop-down list, select the Application, Security and System checkboxes under Windows Logs.
  4. Click OK. The Save Filter to Custom View dialog box appears.
  5. In the Name text box type Critical & Warning and click OK. The Critical & Warning view appears in the Custom Views folder.
  6. Adjust the panes of the Event Viewer so the new Custom View is visible in the left pane. Click on it so that its information is displayed in the detail pane. Take a screenshot of the Event Viewer window.

2.0 Monitoring your server with Performance Monitor

  1. With Computer Management still open from the above section. Collapse the Event Viewer and expand Performance, then Monitoring Tools and then click Performance Monitor. The Performance Monitor graph will appear, but it will not be monitoring any counters.
  2. To add a counter to the graph, click the Add button in the tool bar (green +). The Add Counters dialog box appears.
  3. In the Available counters list, expand Processor to view all available counters for a processor.  Select %Processor Time.
  4. The Instances of selected object: area will display how many instances of the object exist on the computer. What you see here will depend on how your VM was configured (multiple processors or not). If you only have 1 (0), select it, or you can select _Total or (all instances).
  5. Click Add >> and click OK to close the Add Counters dialog box.

    Your Performance Monitor graph should now start collecting real-time data on your server. The Processor:%Processor Time counter tells you what percentage of the time your processor is busy working on non-idle threads. To create some activity, open a few tools or programs and then close them again. See what happens to the line on the graph.

    Spikes in usage are normal, especially as applications are being opened. The problem is when processors are busy almost all of the time (the line on the chart stays high). It may indicate that the server has too high a load and more processors need to added, or work needs to be off-loaded to another server.
  6. Click the Add button in the toolbar again and use the Add Counters dialog box to add the following objects: counters to your chart:
    • System: Processor Queue Length
    • Memory: Pages Faults/Sec
    • Memory: Pages/Sec
    • Network Interface: Output Queue Length
    • PhysicalDisk(_Total): Current Disk Queue Length
  7. Click OK to close the Add Counters dialog box.
  8. With the Performance Monitor screen displayed, open three different programs or tools.
  9. View the affects this has on the Performance Monitor graph.
  10. Click Properties on the toolbar (or right-click Performance Monitor in the left pane and select Properties). You will see several tabs of properties about the Performance Monitor graph. Notice in the settings:
    • Source tab: the graph can display current data (what we are doing now) or logged data
    • Data tab: you can change the colour and line style for the counters
    • Graph tab: you can change the graph type from line to Histogram (bar) or report and you can change the vertical scale, which might make some of the data easier to read.

2.1 Creating a User Defined Data Collector Set

Currently we are monitoring real-time data, but we can create a Data Collector Set from our counters and monitor them and log the data to be analyzed later.

  1. Right-click on Performance Monitor in the left-pane and select New and Data Collector Set. Name it Lab 8 Data Collector Set and click Next. Notice the path for the Root directory, keep the default and click Next. Leave the <Default> in the Run as: box, ensure Save and Close is selected, and click Finish. You have just saved the counters from the previous section into a Data Collector Set. We can now use it to log performance data.
  2. Click the Delete (red X) on the Performance Monitor tool bar multiple times until all counters are removed from the graph.
  3. In the left pane, expand Data Collector Sets, and expand User Defined. You should see your new Lab 8 Data Collector Set listed.
  4. Right-click on the Lab 8 Data Collector Set and click Start to start logging counter information into the log file. While the data is being collected, open a few applications, tools or programs and then close them again. Right-click on your Data Collector Set again and click Stop. You have now logged data to a file.
  5. Open the Performance Monitor, and click the View Log Data button (second from the left) from the tool bar. On the Source tab, navigate to the log file you just created (it should be easy if you just follow the defaults). Notice that you can select the range of time you would like to view, but we have a very short log file so this is not necessary. Click OK.
  6. The graph does not display anything by default. Click the Add button on the toolbar to add the counters that have been collected. Notice that you can add just a few or all of the counters. Add any 3 or more of the counters to the graph.
  7. Adjust the panes so that your Lab 8 Data Collector Set is visible under the User Defined area of the Data Collector Sets and that your Performance Monitor is showing the graph from the data you collected, and then take a screenshot.
  • Create a Microsoft Word document (or use Google docs), with a name of YourSenecaID-Lab8.docx.
  • Paste each screen shot into the document, and label them clearly. You should have 2 images. 
  • Save the document as a PDF file using the same name as the document file, and upload it to MySeneca, under Course Documents>Labs>Lab8 before the due date.
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