Configuring the Windows Performance Monitor

The Windows Performance Monitor is an accurate tool for measuring Meridian application server performance.

With it, you can:

• Monitor real-time and historical system performance

• Identify trends over time

• Identify bottlenecks

• Monitor effects of system configuration changes

• Determine system capacity

Some of the most relevant Performance Monitor counters are described in the following table.

Relevant Performance Monitor counters

Counter	Description
Processor Queue Length	This counter of the System object is an indicator of the number of outstanding requests the processor has in its queue. Each application thread requires a certain number of processor cycles. A consistent processor queue length greater than 2 may mean the processor is inadequate for the applications that it runs.
Avg. Disk Queue Length, Current Disk Queue Length	These counters of the Logical Disk object monitor the average number and the instantaneous number of both reads and writes queued for the selected disk. Note: For best performance, Avg. Disk Queue Length should not exceed two requests per disk drive.
% Disk Time, % Disk Read Time, % Disk Write Time	These counters of the Logical Disk object monitor the percentage of time spent servicing the particular I/O requests during the sampling interval. Use the % Disk Time counter in conjunction with the % Processor Time counter of the Processor object to determine the time the system spends executing I/O requests or processing non-idle threads. Use the % Disk Read Time and % Disk Write Time counters to gain further insight into the type of I/O being performed. Your goal is to have a high percentage of time spent executing non-idle threads (high % Processor Time) and executing I/O (high % Disk Time). On a highly optimized system, these counters can be consistently over 90 percent. If one of these counters is substantially lower than the other, it is likely that the high counter indicates a bottleneck, and further investigation is necessary. With high % Disk Time, use the % Disk Read Time and % Disk Write Time counters to get the I/O breakdown. With high % Processor Time, use the % User Time and % Privileged Time to get further CPU utilization breakdown.

The data captured by Performance Monitor can be very useful for problem diagnosis and configuration analysis. You might be asked by Accruent Technical Support to log performance data and send it to Accruent for analysis.

To log Performance Monitor data:

1. Open the Performance Monitor on the Meridian application server.

2. Create a new counter log or data collector set, depending on the version of Windows.

3. Add all counters of the AutoManager EDM Server object.

4. Set the sample interval to between 15 and 120 seconds, depending on the duration of the problem.

5. Start the log just before reproducing the problem and run it long enough to capture a representative sampling of the problem behavior.

6. Compress the resulting log file into a ZIP file and send it together with a CAB file created as described in Create a System Status Report to Accruent Technical Support as instructed.