SQL Server 2008 R2 : Performance Monitoring Tools (part 10) - Creating an Extended Events Session

4. Windows Performance Monitor

Windows Performance Monitor is a graphical tool that provides a visual display of built-in Windows performance counters, either in real-time or as a way to review historical data. It is supplied as part of the installation of any Windows server or workstation (in Windows Server 2008 it is called Reliability and Performance Monitor). Hundreds of performance counters are available. These counters can be monitored on the local machine or remotely over the network, and they can be set up to monitor any object and counter on multiple systems at once from one session. A small subset of performance information is also available via the Windows Task Manager Performance tab. However, all this information and more is available using the Performance Monitor facility.

Performance Monitor features multiple graph views that enable you to visually review performance log data. You can add performance counters to Performance Monitor individually or by creating custom Data Collector Sets. The recent version of Windows Performance Monitor combines the functionality of previous standalone tools including Performance Logs and Alerts (PLA), Server Performance Advisor (SPA), and System Monitor.

You can use Windows Performance Monitor to examine how programs you run affect your computer’s performance, both in real-time and by collecting log data for later analysis. When you install SQL Server, additional performance counters are installed that you can use to monitor SQL Server performance elements such as cache utilization, locking, wait states, and I/O performance. Performance Monitor can be launched from many different points. From SQL Profiler, choose the Tools menu option and choose the Performance Monitor item. Figure 20 shows this menu option from SQL Profiler. You can also launch it from the Administrative Tools folder in the Windows Start menu.

Figure 20. Launching Performance Monitor from SQL Profiler.

Performance Monitor Views

When you first launch Performance Monitor, you are presented with the welcome screen (in Windows 2008, the welcome screen is the Resource Overview). Click on Performance Monitor in the Monitoring Tools folder to bring up the Performance Monitor main display. In the Performance Monitor main display, you can view the performance information in one of three different modes:

• Graphic chart— This view, the default, shows the selected counters as colored lines over a timeline with the y-axis representing the value and the x-axis representing time. You can also add gridlines (horizontal and vertical). This view lets you view performance trends over time.

• Histogram chart— This view shows the selected counters as colored horizontal bars (as in a histogram). These histogram bars change dynamically to reflect the data sampling values. With this view, you see a current snapshot of the performance counters rather than the trend of activity over time.

• Report display— In this mode, you see the current values for counters collected under their parent object in a textual display format. Like the histogram view, this view does not show you the activity trends, just the current sampling value, but it is great for showing what counters you are collecting data with.

Figure 21 shows the basic graphic chart view interface for Performance Monitor displaying several useful system counters . These counters are added to Performance Monitor through the creation of Performance Monitor Data Collector Sets.

Figure 21. Performance Monitor chart view, with various counters.

When you open the Performance Monitor view, depending on the OS version you are running, you see up to three default performance counters: Memory: Pages/sec, PhysicalDisk:Avg.Disk Queue Length, and Processor:% Processor Time. These counters provide a good start, but you really want to see many other counters that reflect the complete picture of how your server is behaving.

You add a counter by clicking the large plus sign toolbar button near the top. The Add Counters dialog that appears (see Figure 22) allows you to select the computer to monitor (this can be a remote server), a performance object, any specific counters, and an instance of the counter, if applicable. You can select the Show Description check box to get a simple explanation of the currently selected counter. When you are done making your selections of counters to add, click OK to return to the Performance Monitor screen.

Figure 22. Adding a counter in Performance Monitor.

You can customize the look of the lines in the chart view by right-clicking and selecting Properties. On the Data tab of the System Monitor Properties dialog, you can specify the color, width, and style of line for each of your counters. You can also change the scale of a counter’s value as well so that the line appears within the graph’s scale of 1 to 100.

To remove a counter, you simply highlight the line in the bottom area of the Chart view window and press the Delete key or click on the X button in the toolbar. If you just want to temporarily hide a counter to make the display a little less busy, you can right-click a counter in the bottom area of the Chart view and select Hide Selected Counters.

The Chart view also provides a way to make a specific counter or set of counters stand out in the display by making the line or lines black and bold. This capability can help you focus on the trend of a specific counter. To turn on highlighting, select one or more counters in the bottom area of the Chart view and click on the Highlight button on the toolbar (the one that looks like highlighter pen just to the right of the big red X).

Adding counters like this in an ad hoc manner is fine for a quick monitoring session. However, after you close the Performance Monitor tool, you lose the counters you have selected, so they are not available the next time you open Performance Monitor. Typically, you need to set up those counters you want to reuse or to have running continuously or on a schedule that captures the performance counters to a log file. To do this, you create one or more Data Collector Sets.