Best Practices for Site Monitoring
For diagnostic purposes, do the following before you start System Monitor or Performance Logs and Alerts on the computer that you are using for monitoring:
Close screen-saver programs.
Turn off services that are not required or relevant to monitoring.
Run the System Monitor from a remote computer. By making this change, you move most of the CPU and I/O cost to the remote computer.
Increase the paging file to physical memory size plus 100 MB.
Use a private administrative network. During remote logging, frequent updating can slow performance because of network transport. Using a private administrator network, that is typically done with another network adapter, solves this issue. You can also reduce the sample of data collection. For example, if you are sampling data at three-second intervals, sample at five-second intervals. Additionally, you can use two network interfaces/computers so that each network segment runs different operations. For example, one computer may be dedicated for updating news and another may be dedicated for updating stock trading transactions.
Review logged data by graphing it using the System Monitor display or exporting it for printing. For detailed information about specific performance counters, see Commerce Server Performance Counters.
Set alerts according to the counter values that you consider unacceptable, as defined by your baseline evaluation.
Reduce the number of performance counters to only those you need. For a list of recommended counters, see Hardware Performance Counters and Commerce Server Performance Counters.
Monitor trends for capacity planning and add or upgrade components as needed. Maintain logged data in a database and view changes to identify changes in resource requirements. After you notice changes in activity or resource demand, you can identify where you may require additional resources.