Using Windows Performance Monitor

In this blog I will explain how we can use Performance monitor to assess the performance of a particular process in memory.
 
Windows Performance Monitor is a Microsoft Management Console (MMC) snap-in that provides tools for analyzing system performance. WPM performs performance data collection for specified processes and log them using data collector sets.

• To launch Windows Performance Monitor

Click Start , click in the Start Search box, type perfmon , and press ENTER

• Data Collector Set

A Data Collector Set is the building block of performance monitoring and reporting in Windows Performance Monitor. It organizes multiple data collection points into a single component that can be used to review or log performance.
Data Collector Sets can contain the following types of data collectors:
1. Performance counters
2. Event trace data
3. System configuration information (registry key values)

• Steps to create data collector with Performance Counters:

Following screen shots explains how to create a data collector and assess performance. Create a new data collector set as below:

Click next and select the necessary performance counters to monitor

Select Process counter and it will list all the available processes in the below box. I have selected Notepad process to monitor. Also the select the counters from the process. Then click add to add the selected counters.

Now I have created data collector for Notepad process and which will collect all process counters and will log into a file for future reference.
Click start to start collecting performance data as below:

• To view the data collector log file

Click on reports and which will list the log file created by above steps.

• Click General tab to adjust sampling interval and the time range to show in the graph

Here the bottom pane will list the counters for which the data has been collected. The graph will display the values for the selected counters.

Also you can access the graph properties by right clicking the graph and then select properties.

• Select source tab to select the data source. You can access from log file or live data by selecting ‘Current activity’

• Select Data tab to add or remove counters and also to color each counter. Here you can adjust the scale for each counter display.

Eg: Your memory counter value is in the range 300000 to 400000…, then you can select the scale as 0.001 to show the values in the range 300 to 400.

• Select Graph tab and update the vertical axes ranges as below: