There are a number of tools which give you details about resource utilization on Windows based machines. Detailed reports are best used when digging further down into an existing problem or analyzing a complex problem that requires a lot of details but an ad hoc quick performance check would suffice with few details. Actually, routine quick checks would benefit most when the results are presented visually and contain explicit values that indicate clearly the state of the resource under test. The inbuilt Data Collector Set allows you to execute a quick performance resource test with a clear and indicative overview of results.
The following steps show the simple procedure to run System Performance standard test and find if your server status is optimal or not:
- From Server Manager, click and expand Diagnostics\Performance\Data Collector Sets and click System Performance – In Windows 7 computers start Performance Monitor.
- Right click System Performance and select Start or click the menu green arrow image – by default, the system will gather information for 1 minute where the green arrow appears and disappears after the 1 minute time-frame.
- After the minute passes, right click the System Performance node and select Latest Report – the menu green writing pad image has the same functionality.
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Examine the report in particular the Resource Overview for any warnings, such as, high utilization of any component.
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Additionally, by right clicking the report node, and selecting View\Performance Monitor you can load the traditional performance monitor graph and add/remove counters.
From the Resource Overview report above, you can easily notice the Memory utilization percentage which according to your specific environment may indicate an increase in resource utilization. A quick look at these high level counters can serve as an alert mechanism which in turn can trigger an escalation process to further diagnose any abnormalities.
