A look at MOSS 2007 Performance Part I – Performance Counters

Introduction

This series is intended to be a multi-part look at MOSS performance. There are many articles out there related to the performance analysis of MOSS but I wanted to attempt to compile some of that information and add some personal insight to the pool.

The scenario this is to address is to attempt the first steps in analyzing the question of "Why is my MOSS performing in a less ideal way that I would like?". We are also going to take a look at some ways in which we can proactively monitor the system with no additional tools to purchase.

Part one of this series will focus on Performance Counters.

Performance Counters

Assumption: Windows Server 2003 or higher is being utilized as the host operating system

General Counters

The following table will outline the performance counters for the base operating system that should be monitored along with thresholds and what the tolerance factor may mean if we are outside of those thresholds.

CPU

Counter	Threshold	General Recommendation	Description
Processor\% Processor Time\_Total	>80%-85% over 3 intervals	Add CPUs if utilization is consistently High	The total percentage of processor usage for a server.
System\Processor Queue Length\(N/A)	>#CPU's + 1	Add Faster CPU's	Exceeding the threshold indicates that the processors are not fast enough to process requests as they occur and that you are running out of processor power.
Processor\Interrupts\Sec	>1000	May indicate Hardware Issue

 
 

Memory

Counter	Threshold	General Recommendation	Description
Memory\Pages/sec\(N\A)	>200	Increase RAM
Memory\Pages Faults/sec\(N\A)	> (Drives x 4096)	Increase RAM	A high rate of page faults indicates a lack of physical memory.
Memory\Available Mbytes\(N\A)	<10% Available	Increase RAM	The amount of physical memory in MBs, immediately available for allocation to a process or for system use on the server.
Memory\Pool Nonpaged Bytes\(N\A)	<10%	Increase RAM
PagingFile\%Usage	>70%	Faster Disks/Better Controller/Add Disks/Increase RAM	Review this value in conjunction with memory—available megabytes and page faults per second—to understand paging activity on the server.

 
 

Disk

Counter	Threshold	General Recommendation	Description
PhysicalDisk\% Disk Time\DriveLetter	>80%	Controller or RAM
PhysicalDisk\Current Disk Queue Length\DriveLetter	>2	Faster Disks/Better Controller/Add Disks
LogicalDisk\%Idle Time\DriveLetter	>20%	Faster Disks/Better Controller/Add Disks	Reports the percentage of time during the sample interval that the disk was idle. If this value is very low, the logical disk is very busy.

 
 

Network

Counter	Threshold	General Recommendation	Description
Network interface\BytesTotalPer2ndInterface	>50% Avail Network Speed	Add Faster NICs/Check Switch	The rate at which bytes are sent and received over each network adapter.

 
 

ASP.NET

Counter	Threshold	General Recommendation	Description
ASP.NET\Requests per second_total		This is a great monitor for capacity as we will look at in a different part of this series	The rate at which bytes are sent and received over each network adapter.

 
 

MOSS WFE

Object	Counter	Threshold	Description
Web service*	Get requests per second_total or individual portal or per Windows SharePoint Portal Services site	Through ongoing monitoring, trends begin to emerge that equate get requests per second with CPU consumption.	Generally speaking, this is the rate at which clients are requesting information from the front-end Web servers.

 
 

MOSS Query Server

Object	Counter	Threshold	Description
Search	Query rate	200 per second	The number of queries posted to the server per second. Keep in mind this counter should be watched on the dedicated search servers.
Search	Succeeded queries	This counter should be used mostly for troubleshooting search problems.	The number of queries that produce successful searches; monitor this counter along with the failed queries counter when troubleshooting search problems.
Search catalogs	Number of documents	Microsoft has tested up to 5,000,000 documents.	This counter identifies the total number of documents in the catalog.
Search catalogs	Queries rate_(index names or all instances)	Indicates which indexes are most searched by users.	The number of queries posted to indexes per second; in conjunction with other performance data, this counter can help determine if your index configuration can be optimized.
Web service*	Get requests per second_total or individual portal or Windows SharePoint Portal Services site.	With ongoing monitoring, trends emerge that equate requests per second with CPU consumption.	Generally speaking, this is the rate that clients are requesting information from the front-end Web servers.

 
 

MOSS Index Server

Object	Counter	Threshold	Description
Search indexer catalogs	Number of documents	Microsoft has tested up to 5,000,000 documents.	The number of documents in the catalog
Search indexer catalogs	Index size MB	256,000 (256 GB)	The current size of index data in megabytes

 
 

I want to thank a colleague of mine, Kirk for providing much of this information that was MOSS specific

References:

English, B. (2004). Microsoft SharePoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit. New York: Microsoft P.

Comments

• Anonymous
  October 04, 2008
  PingBack from http://www.easycoded.com/a-look-at-moss-2007-performance-part-i-%e2%80%93-performance-counters/

• Anonymous
  January 09, 2009
  And several topics came up so I thought I would post some of them here. Here are some of the counters

• Anonymous
  December 08, 2010
  I realize this post is kind of old, but is there an update to this, I can't find most of these counters on any of my MOSS servers?  I am monitoring lots of counters on the IIS side, is that good enough?  I can't find anywhere else that list counters based on roles like this, but a lot of them just are not in my counter or object list.  Anyone else have the same issue?

• Anonymous
  January 24, 2011
  Sorry for the delay, The counters will not be listed under role but under the heading of the object first.