Exercise 12.2: Creating a Chart in Performance Monitor

Exercise 12.2: Creating a Chart in Performance Monitor

Objectives: Become familiar with the process of creating and reading a Performance Monitor chart. Understand the basic components of the Performance Monitor main window and the Add to Chart dialog box. Learn how to turn on disk performance counters using the diskperf command.

Estimated time: 25 minutes

1.	From the Start menu, select Programs. Choose the Administrative Tools group and click Performance Monitor. The Performance Monitor main window appears on your screen.
2.	Pull down the Edit menu and choose Add to Chart (see Figure 12.4 ). The Add to Chart dialog box appears (see Figure 12.5). You can also invoke the Add to Chart dialog box by clicking the plus sign in the tool bar of the Performance Monitor main window.
3.a.	The box labeled Computer at the top of the Add to Chart dialog box tells Performance Monitor which computer you want to monitor. The default is the local system. Click the ellipsis button to the right of the box for a list of computers on the network.
3.b.	The box labeled Object tells Performance Monitor which object you want to monitor. As you learned earlier in this chapter, an object is a hardware or software component of your system. You can think of an object as a category of system statistics. Pull down the Object menu. Scroll through the list of objects and look for the Processor, Memory, PhysicalDisk, LogicalDisk, Server, and Network Segment objects described earlier in this chapter. Choose the PhysicalDisk object. If you have more than one physical disk on your system, a list of your physical disks will appear in the Instance box to the right of the Object box. The Instance box lists all instances of the object selected in the Object box. If necessary, choose a physical disk instance.
3.c.	The box labeled Counter displays the counters (the statistical measurements) that are available for the object displayed in the object box. Scroll through the list of counters for the PhysicalDisk object. If you feel like experimenting, select a different object in the Object box. Notice that the new object is accompanied by a different set of counters. Switch back to the PhysicalDisk object and choose the %Disk Time counter. Click the Explain button on the right side of the Add to Chart dialog box. Notice that a description of the %Disk Time counter appears at the bottom of the dialog box.
3.d.	Click the Done button in the Add to Chart dialog box. The dialog box disappears, and you see the Performance Monitor main window.
4.	In the Performance Monitor main window, a vertical line sweeps across the chart from left to right. You may also see a faint colored line at the bottom of the chart recording a %Disk Time value of 0. If so, you haven’t enabled the disk performance counters for your system. (If the disk performance monitors are enabled on your system, you should see a spikey line that looks like the readout from an electrocardiogram. You’re done with this step. Go on to step 5.) If you need to enable the disk performance counters, click the Start button and go to the command prompt. Enter the command: diskperf -y. Then reboot your system and repeat Steps 1-4. (You don’t have to browse through the object and counter menus this time.)
5.	You should now see a spikey line representing the percent of time that the physical disk is busy reading or writing. Select Add to Chart from the Edit menu. Select the PhysicalDisk object and choose the counter Avg. Disk Queue Length. Click the Add button. Then choose the counter Avg. Disk Bytes/Read. Click the Add button and then click the Done button.
6.	Examine the Performance Monitor main window. All three of the counters you selected should be tracing out spikey lines on the chart (see Figure 12.6). Each line is a different color. At the bottom of the window is a table showing which counter goes with which color. The table also gives the scale of the output, the instance, the object, and the computer.
7.	Below the chart (but above the table of counters) is a row of statistical parameters labeled: Last, Average, Min, Max, and Graph Time. These parameters pertain to the counter that is selected in the table at the bottom of the window. Select a different counter and you see that some of these values change. The Last value is the counter value over the last second. Graph time is the time it takes (in seconds) for the vertical line that draws the chart to sweep across the window.
8.	Start Windows Explorer. Select a file (a graphics file or a word processing document) and choose Copy from Explorer’s Edit menu. (This copies the file you selected to the clipboard.) Go to another directory and select Paste from the Edit menu. (This creates a copy of the file in the second directory.) Minimize Explorer and return to the Performance Monitor main screen. The disk activity caused by your Explorer session is now reflected in the spikes of the counter lines.
9.	Pull down the Options menu and select Chart. The Chart Options dialog box appears on your screen (see Figure 12.7). The Chart Options dialog box provides a number of options governing the chart display. The Update Time section enables you to choose an update interval. The update interval tells Performance Monitor how frequently it should update the chart with new values. (If you choose the Manual Update option, the chart will update only when you press Ctrl+U or click Update Now in the Options menu.) Experiment with the Chart Options or click the Cancel button to return to the main window.
10.	Pull down the File menu. Choose Exit to exit Performance Monitor. Note that the Save Chart Settings and Save Chart Settings As options in the File menu enable you to save the collection of objects and counters you’re using now so you can monitor the same counters later and avoid setting them up again. The Export Chart option enables you to export the data to a file that you can then open with a spreadsheet or database application. The Save Workspace option saves the settings for your chart, as well as any settings for alerts, logs, or reports specified in this session. Learn more about alerts, logs, and reports in Exercise 12.3.