Content area
Full Text
Part 1 of a series.
Even though it is a relatively new operating system, Microsoft Windows NT is equipped with extensive facilities for monitoring performance. It is one of the tell-tale signs of maturity that belie the operating system's tender age. NT can collect a prodigious amount of performance-oriented data - the amount of data is both a blessing and a curse - and the operating system also includes several useful applications for viewing and analyzing the data collected. The tools Microsoft provides with NT will probably suffice for many users, but more sophisticated users like hardware planners with an enterprise-wide outlook will doubtless require better solutions.
There are two distinct set of performance monitoring services that NT provides. The first is an interface for managing the collection and reporting of performance data objects. The Windows NT kernel is extensively instrumented, and a wide range of detailed, performance data is available on system resources and running processes over this interface. The interface defines a callable facility that allows a performance monitoring application to retrieve the information that is available and a predefined set of data structures that are used to pass the data. The interface is also open and extensible so that it is possible for key applications and subsystems to add to the pool of available performance metrics. Many of Microsoft's internally developed applications already exploit this extensible interface, having added their own performance statistics to those maintained by the operating system kernel. These applications include MS SQL Server, Exchange Server and Internet Information Server. Windows NT 4.0 also includes network monitoring capabilities. It is only a matter of time before applications ported to NT by other vendors begin to utilize this interface for performance data collection.
A good reason for using the standard facilities for performance data collection that are available in NT is the data is immediately accessible by the second set of services - the applications Microsoft provides for collecting and viewing performance data. While the Microsoft Resource Kit mentions a dozen different performance tools that are available, there are really two principal tools. One is the Windows NT Task Manager, revised for NT version 4.0 to offer a realtime view of system activity. The second and more complete and...