Performance console overview
Applies To: Windows Server 2003, Windows Server 2003 R2, Windows Server 2003 with SP1, Windows Server 2003 with SP2
Performance console overview
The Windows Server 2003 family provides the following tools as part of the Performance console:
System Monitor
Performance Logs and Alerts
Task Manager
Monitoring system performance is an important part of maintaining and administering your operating system. You use performance data to do the following:
Understand your workload and the corresponding effect on your system's resources.
Observe changes and trends in workloads and resource usage so you can plan for future upgrades.
Test configuration changes or other tuning efforts .
Diagnose problems and target components or processes for optimization.
System Monitor and Performance Logs and Alerts provide detailed data about the resources that are used by specific components of the operating system and by programs that have been designed to collect performance data. Graphs provide a display for performance-monitoring data. Logs provide recording capabilities for the data. Alerts send notification to users when a counter value reaches, rises above, or falls below a defined threshold.
Task Manager is another tool that provides performance information about systems running the Windows Server 2003 family. Task Manager provides information about programs and processes that are running on your computer, plus a summary of its processor and memory usage. For information about Task Manager, see Task Manager overview.
Microsoft technical support often uses the results of performance monitoring in problem diagnosis. Therefore, Microsoft recommends that you monitor system performance as part of your administrative routine.
For information on server reliability, availability, and performance and tuning features in the Windows Server 2003 family, see Features for Management, Security, and Best Performance.
For overviews of the performance-monitoring tools, see the following topics: