Create Performance Monitor Collections for Servers

This document will detail how to pull data/statistics on the performance of a server during specific time frames.

The first question to ask is what data is relevant. Below is a list of the normal data we would want from our servers activity.

1. Data to pull:

   1. Processor

   2. Physical Disk

   3. Memory

   4. Paging

   5. Network 

The Windows server provides hundreds of counters that can pull data, but for most common instances the above list will suffice. 

To begin to create your collection follow the described steps below:

1. Login to the server in questions (i.e. the server you want to analyze).

2. Open Performance Monitor (located under the Administrator Tools).

3. On the left hand side locate and click "Data Collection Sets".

4. Under "Data Collection Sets" Right click "User Defined" and select NEW "Data Collector set".

5. Type in a name for the set using as much detail as possible including date and user name i.e.: (sqlprod07 10-02-2018 cpu,phydisk,net,ram,page job112)

6. Below the name you just entered click "Create Manually" radio button.

7. Click "Next".

8. On "What Type of Data do you want to include", under Create Data Logs place a check in "Performance Counter".

9. Click "Next".

10. On "Which performance counters would you like to log" click the "Add" button.

11. The available counters are displayed on the left side of the display. Locate the below counters and add them to right side:

    1. Processor:

       1. % Processor Time

    2. Physical Disk:

       1. % Disk Read Time

       2. % Disk Time

       3. % Disk Write Time

       4. % Idle Time

       5. Current Disk Queue Length

       6. Disk Reads/sec

       7. Disk Writes/sec

       8. Split IO/sec

    3. Network Interface or Network Adapter:

       1. Network Throughput

       2. Bytes Received/sec

       3. Bytes Sent/sec

    4. Individual Process Statistics (optional)

       1. JAVA

       2. Oracle

    5. Memory:

       1. Available Bytes

       2. Cache Bytes

       3. Pool Nonpaged Bytes

       4. Paging

       5. Pages/sec

       6. Page Reads/sec

       7. Page Writes/sec

       8. % Commited Bytes In Use

12. Some of the above counters may be found in different sub-menus depending on the windows version used.

13. When all of the counters have been added click "OK". This will return you to the "Which performance counters would you like to log" page.

14. The sample interval option provides a way to determine how often you want your statistics to be gathered. The quicker the time the more resources will be used. Although this is not a high resource intense process 5-10 seconds would suffice for a baseline. 15 second interval will grab data 4 times a minute. 10 second interval will show 6 points of entry (or peaks in your data) per minute. The deciding factor on how often to use the interval is determined by how fast the activity you are looking to view occurs. Fast acting events will require a faster interval time. This may have relevance in order to see ETL's jobs that run in under a minute.

15. A (10) second interval that runs for 15 minutes will produce approximately a 192KB file. This information can be utilized to ensure that enough disk space is available.

16. Click "Next".

17. On the "Where would you like the data to be saved" change the path to point to a folder you created that has enough disk space. i.e. "C:\perflogs".

18. Click "Next".

19. On the next page leave the default setting to "Run As" "Default".

20. Click Finish.

21. You are now returned to the main Performance Monitor Screen.

22. Locate the Data Collector Set you just created and right click and select "Properties".

23. On the "General Tab" Fill in an appropriate Description of why you are pulling this data. The more descriptive the better. For reference see below:

    1. Generate a report detailing the status of local hardware resources, system response times, and processes on the local computer. Use this information to identify possible causes of performance issues. Membership in the local Administrators group, or equivalent, is the minimum required to run this Data Collector Set.

24. On the "Directory" tab Ensure that the Sub-directory format follows our timing standard as shown below:

    1. yyyyMMdd-NNNNNN

25. Also, ensure that the "prefix sub-directory with computer name" is checked.