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How to create a Data Collector Set to help evaluate domain controller capacity requirements

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This topic explains how to create a user-defined data collector set using Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor. The counters that are added to the collector set are those that are specified in Capacity Planning for Active Directory Domain Services. They comprise the data set to gather in order to evaluate the current capacity that existing domain controllers are consuming. For an explanation of each counter and the difference between logical disk and physical disk, see Performance Monitor Counters. This procedure shows how to load all the relevant counters in a custom data collector set.

  1. In Server Manager, double-click Diagnostics, double-click Performance, double-click Data Collector Sets, and click User Defined.

  2. Click Action, click New, and click Data Collector Set.

  3. Type a name for the data collector set, click Create manually, and click Next.

  4. Click Create data logs, select Performance counter, and click Next.

  5. For Sample interval, select 15 (default) or 30 or 60, change Units to Minutes, and click Add.

  6. Under Available counters:

    1. Double-click Logical Disk, under Instances of selected object, select the drive that hosts the AD DS database, select the following counters and click Add:
      1. LogicalDisk()\Avg Disk sec/Read
      2. LogicalDisk()\Avg Disk sec/Write
      3. LogicalDisk()\Avg Disk sec/Transfer
      4. LogicalDisk()\Reads/sec
      5. LogicalDisk()\Writes/sec
      6. LogicalDisk()\Transfers/sec
      7. LogicalDisk()\Avg. Disk Read Queue Length
      8. LogicalDisk()\Avg. Disk Write Queue Length
      9. LogicalDisk()\Avg. Disk Queue Length
    2. Double-click Netlogon, under Instances of selected object, select <All instances>, select the following counters and click Add:
      1. Netlogon(*)\Semaphore Acquires
      2. Netlogon(*)\Semaphore Timeouts
    3. Double-click Network Interface, under Instances of selected object, select the network adapter for the domain controller, select the following counters and click Add:
      1. Network Interface(*)\Bytes Received/sec
      2. Network Interface(*)\Bytes Sent/sec
    4. Double-click Process, under Instances of selected object, select lsass, select the following counters and click Add:
      1. Process(lsass)\ Processor Time

When done, click OK, then click Finish. When peak activity is expected for the domain controller, right-click the data collector set, and click Start.