How to Setup Alerts Using Perfmon

Scenario

Say you find that the CPU utilization on your computer or server keeps spiking, but it does so at random times.  If you are looking in task manager, you might be able to identify which process is responsible for the spikes.  Now say you want to be notified when these spikes occur.  You can actually use a built in Microsoft product to send alerts and or log events like this.

Microsoft Performance Monitor.

Using Microsoft's Performance Monitor, you can select counters such as "%Processor Time" or "Handle Count" and then trigger alerts based on these counters. Microsoft has a lot of counters that you can use so that you can monitor computer or server with a high degree of granularity.  Here is an example of the Processor Object containing counters for CPU usage: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ms804036.aspx. You can also monitor memory, disk usage, network usage, etc.

You can set up a data collector set that will allow you to be notified, for example, when a process reaches 60% User Time.  When you do this, you will receive an alert every time this threshold is met.

Unfortunately, while you can setup these alerts to be tripped when a counter reaches a threshold, you can't set it up to alert  you when, say the %Processor reaches X amount for Y duration.

How to Setup Performance Monitor Data Collector Sets to Monitor System Performance

Scenario

Are you having issues with the performance of your PC or server?  If so, you can use Microsoft's Performance Monitor to see performance trends over a period of time.  In this post, I will talk about how to collect the data you need in order to assess your issue. I will talk more about analysis of the data you collect in other posts.

Overall Steps for Data Collection

1. Create two DCS.
2. Start both DCS.
3. Wait for the performance issue to occur.
4. After you are sure that you captured data during the problem, stop the DCR.

We will be creating two separate data collector sets.  We will basically create two identical data collector sets.  The only difference between the two sets will be the polling interval.  Performance Monitor data collector sets poll data collectors providers at a whatever interval you specify.  We will set one of the intervals to 2 seconds and the other to 4 minutes.

Why would we do this?

In order to catch problems related to the CPU, we will need to poll at intervals no greater than 3 seconds.  For memory issues, we need the interval to be longer.  We will be creating circular logs which will overwrite the oldest data once they reach their size limit.  In the case of memory issues, we usually want to collect data over a period of days or even weeks.