Server Performance

I wrote a blog earlier this year on the subject of performance monitoring called 'A very quick guide to Monitoring the Performance of your Exchange Server.' This has all the information that I reckon you need to setup, configure and analyze performance monitor data for your Exchange Servers.

I always compare the information that I have collected via Performance Monitor with that held in ExBPA, which not only includes the specification of the servers but also gives an idea of where the potential performance bottlenecks might be.  For example the following are a few of many rules included in ExBPA:

• Page File Usage counter greater than 50%
• Free Page Table entries is at the warning threshold
• Round-trip times to global catalog server are taking more than 10 ms

For the purposes of the health check identify potential bottlenecks and compare these with those identified by ExBPA, document the average and peak values.  Follow the 'Troubleshooting Microsoft Exchange Server Performance' whitepaper to understand what can be done.

For the future it is also important to regularly run Performance Monitor again on the same servers for the same period of time, to understand how the performance has improved since making any changes, and also to see how the performance is changing over time to assist with future design and capacity planning.

..'Run your own Exchange Server Health Check....  Part 5 - Routing' to follow soon...