Managing, Monitoring, and Optimizing System Performance

A large part of the day-to-day tasks of an administrator is the management and monitoring of servers and the applications that are running on them. Let's start this section by looking at some of the utilities that are included in Windows 2000 to make the administrator's job easier. The system performance tools we discuss are as follows :

• Task Manager

• System Monitor

• Performance Logs and Alerts

Task Manager

The Task Manager utility is included in Windows 2000 to give the administrator a way to monitor and manage the state of currently running applications and processes. In addition, Task Manager also provides the administrator with a summarized view of the basic system resources that are in use.

Task Manager can be used to monitor the state of active applications, including a real-time view of the system resources assigned to each application. Task Manager also allows you to observe applications that have stopped responding and terminate them.

Task Manager can be started several ways, including

• Right-clicking the taskbar and clicking Task Manager on the shortcut menu.

• Pressing Ctrl+Shift+Esc.

• Pressing Ctrl+Alt+Del to open the Windows Security dialog box and clicking the Task Manager button.

The Task Manger window has three tabs: Applications, Processes, and Performance.

Applications Tab

The Applications tab, shown in Figure 5.1, displays a list of the currently active applications along with their status ”either Running or Not Responding . The default status for a program is Running; however, there will be times when a program will temporarily display a status of Not Responding. This usually occurs when another program or programs have a higher priority and receive the bulk of the system resources or when an application crashes.

Figure 5.1. The Task Manager Applications tab showing running applications.

If the application that is not responding is not automatically restored to Running status after the other applications have completed, you probably need to manually terminate it. You can do this by right-clicking the application and selecting End Task from the shortcut menu, or clicking the End Task button at the bottom of the Task Manager window. Unfortunately, if the application has any files open, your data will not be saved. Task Manager also allows you to terminate running applications.

There are two methods to start applications using Task Manager:

• From the Task Manager menu, select File, New Task (Run).

• From the Task Manager Applications tab, click the New Task button in the lower-right corner of the window.

Using either method is identical to using the Run command from the Start menu.

Processes Tab

The Processes tab, shown in Figure 5.2, displays a list of the currently active processes along with the resources that they are using. The default resource columns displayed are CPU Time and Memory Usage. However, you can add additional columns, such as Page Faults, I/O Writes, and Peak Memory Usage, by selecting View, Set Columns from the Task Manager menu.

Figure 5.2. The Task Manager Processes tab showing processes sorted by CPU Time.

Using the Processes tab, you can immediately see which processes are using the majority of the system resources. In the default view, you can sort the processes by the following:

• Name (Image Name )

• Process ID (PID)

• CPU percentage used (CPU)

• CPU time used (CPU Time)

• Memory used (Mem Usage)

For example, to sort the processes by the amount of CPU time used, click the CPU Time column heading. This allows you to identify a process that is hogging resources and starving the other processes. This can indicate a process that is having a problem and needs to either be terminated or set to a lower priority.

Windows 2000 distributes processing time to applications using priority levels . Priority levels are assigned numbers from 0 to 31. Applications and noncritical operating system functions are assigned levels of 0 to 15, whereas real-time functions, such as the operating system kernel, are assigned levels of 16 to 31. The normal base priority is 8.

If a process is running at the base priority and a real-time process is started, the real-time process will receive more system resources than the process running at base priority. This can sometimes cause the application that the lower priority process is controlled by to show a status of Not Responding on the Task Manager Applications tab.

To keep a real-time process from starving a base process, you can manually increase the priority of a lower-priority process to a higher value. To do this, right-click the lower-priority process in the Processes tab of Task Manger, select Set Priority, and select a higher priority, as shown in Figure 5.3.

Figure 5.3. The Task Manager Processes tab showing how to change priorities.

Task Manager does not allow you to set a process to a specific number; it only allows you to set priority classes. The priority classes with their default priority numbers are as follows:

• Realtime ” priority 24

• High ” priority 13

• AboveNormal ” priority 9

• Normal ” priority 8

• BelowNormal ” priority 7

• Low ” priority 4

Only an administrator can assign the Realtime priority level to a process.

In some situations, a process must be terminated. You can either terminate a specific process or terminate the process and all other processes that are linked to it. To terminate a specific process, right-click the process entry, in the Processes tab of Task Manager, and select End Process. To terminate that process and any other process that it had started, select End Process Tree . For example, if you terminate the process for a word processing program, you can select End Process Tree to additionally terminate the spell checker or grammar processes that were started by the word processor process.

Not all processes can be terminated using Task Manager. The Kill utility , included in the Windows 2000 Server Resource Kit, will terminate most processes including services or system processes. Use it carefully , because terminating system processes can cause your server to become unstable.

On a multiprocessor server, there is an additional item on the shortcut menu of the Processes tab called Set Affinity . The Set Affinity command allows you to limit a process to a specific CPU. This option should be used with care, because it could potentially decrease the performance of the process.

Performance Tab

The Performance tab, shown in Figure 5.4, displays the CPU and memory usage for your server. The display includes graphs of the current usage, plus additional histograms showing recent usage. Below the graphs are numerical statistics for the CPU and memory usage.

Figure 5.4. The Task Manager Performance tab showing server usage statistics.

The information shown here can give you a quick overview of the performance characteristics of your server. Any abnormalities that are displayed here indicate that you should investigate further using some of the other Windows 2000 Server utilities.