PerfMon - Analysis - Automation : PC+A
The performance monitor, or system monitor, is a utility
used to track a range of processes and give a real time graphical display of
the results, on a Windows system. This tool can be used to assist you with the
planning of upgrades, tracking of processes that need to be optimized,
monitoring results of tuning and configuration scenarios, and the understanding
of a workload and its effect on resource usage to identify bottlenecks.
Performance Troubleshooting requires tonns
of data about the system. PerMon - Performance
Monitor (Reliability Monitor - additional component in Windows 2008) is one
such that provides tones of streamlined data through various counters defined
into various categories. PerfMo provides a feature
where a customised collection set [counters from
various categories] can be configured and data can be collected to identify the
performance issues - ranging from a certain workflow in the appication
to the much bigger bottlenec in the system. Simple so far…
What makes this process of collecting the data challenging
is – the nature of this tool that needs to be run on the system for it to
accurately collected the information. Therefore, once
the data is collected in a format desirable (.CSV, .BLG) we need to port this
to local systems and spread in Excel to go through the ocean of decimal numbers
to figure out what actually we want to conclude.
Excel is one tool that can be run to get some graphs to show
them the trend visually. PerfMon itself provide the
feature to feed the .BLG file and repro the collection trace again off-line.
Still doesn’t make us quite there…
Application
PC+A = I called it - Performance
Collected PLUS Analyzer – is inspired by PAL (codeplex/pal
) and makes use of underlying scripts and
templates. Extended it with a UI (Source code attached in zip format) that is
capable of (i) configuring the collection set, (ii)
running and stopping, (iii) importing the .BLG file locally, (iv) run the
analysis against the selected template (SQL, IIS, BizTalk, Exchange, AD) to
analyze the data against threshold already set in the template. I am currently using the XML Template
available with PAL – which has the feature to extend the template by providing threshold
and even customizing the XML.
Currently
this tool is (Prototype/POC) customized for Microsoft IT environment for only
SQL Server related Counters, but the given source code and templates (provided
with this) can be customized to suite any enterprise production environment. A great prototype that can
be customized and extended to suite any enterprise (Windows Platform – 2003/2008/Virtual
Server) shop. Still in infancy so
all the feature doesn’t work and not fully error-free. The report and the source PAL tool are worth
taking a look.
This gives me
an idea to club my Quick DMV tool concept with this to give a one tool for pure
SQL Server performance analysis..I am going to try
that in my free time for another 2-3 weeks for now.
