Exercises 14.1. Setting Performance Alerts One of the most common monitoring scenarios is tracking down a reported "slow" network. Typically, users will call the help desk and complain that the access to a file or application server seems slow. You suspect that the network adapter is being overwhelmed with traffic. You will need to positively identify this issue and preferably take an in-depth look at the server when it occurs. What is the best way to accomplish this in Windows Server 2003? On your own, try to develop a solution that involves limited ongoing management by the system administrator. If you would like to see a possible solution, follow these steps: Estimated Time: 20 minutes 1. | From the Start menu, click Start, All Programs, Administrative Tools, Performance.
| 2. | The Performance tool opens with the System Monitor view displayed. Right-click the Alerts entry under Performance Logs and Alerts in the left pane of the snap-in and select New Alert Settings from the pop-up menu.
| 3. | In the New Alert Settings dialog box, enter the name for the new alert.
| 4. | In the Alert Properties dialog box, click the Add button to add the performance object Network Interface. Select the desired instance, and then click the Close button.
| 5. | After you have selected the counters to monitor, set the alert condition using the Alert Value drop-down field. For this exercise, set the value to 80%.
| 6. | Click the Action tab and select the option to send a network message to your workstation.
| 7. | Click the Schedule tab. On the Schedule tab, you can select the start and stop times for monitoring or select to manually start and stop the log.
| 8. | Click OK to save the log.
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Exam Questions | 1. | Mary is a developer for a small software firm. She is testing a new server-based product that updates a SQL database and then prompts the administrator for information that it then sends to an email server. Because Mary is running Windows Server 2003 on a desktop computer, the performance is not very good. She wants to increase the performance of the application to an acceptable level. Which should Mary do? 
| A. | Use Task Manager to increase the priority of the database application to AboveNormal. |
| B. | Use Task Manager to increase the priority of the test application to Normal. |
| C. | Use Task Manager to increase the priority of the database application to Realtime |
| D. | Use Task Manager to increase the priority of the test application to Realtime. |
| | | | 2. | Davin is a new system administrator for an engineering firm. The engineering firm recently fired its previous system administrator because the performance of the firm's file server was always poor. The server is configured with a hardware RAID-5 array with three disks. The disk cabinet has space available for three more disks. Davin decides that he is going to retain his job, so he fires up System Monitor and observes the performance of his file server. The first thing that he notices is that the PhysicalDisk: %Disk Time and the Paging File: %Usage Peak counters are both pegged at 100%. What can he do to improve the performance of the file server?
| A. | Add more free space to the file server. |
| B. | Add two more drives to the drive array. |
| C. | Convert the drive array to RAID-1 for better performance. |
| D. | Add more RAM to the file server. |
| | 3. | John is having what he thinks are disk performance problems on his new Windows Server 2003 server. He decides to use System Monitor to look at the disk counters to see how everything is performing. What must he do to enable the counters for the logical disks?
| A. | At the command line, type DISKPERF -y, and then restart the server. |
| B. | At the command line, type DISKPERF -yd, and then restart the server. |
| C. | At the command line, type DISKPERF -y. |
| D. | Nothing, the counters are already enabled. |
| | 4. | James is having performance problems on one of his database servers. He ran System Monitor for a couple of days and came up with the following average values: Processor: %Processor Time: 80% System Processor Queue Length: 5 PhysicalDisk: Avg. Disk Queue Length: 2 Memory: Pages Input/sec: 2
What should James do?
| A. | Add more RAM. |
| B. | Add a faster disk. |
| C. | Add an additional processor. |
| D. | Get a better NIC. |
| | | | 5. | Stuart is running a database application that runs in the background but requires a lot of processor time. He is running this application on a server with several other applications, but they are neither critical nor time sensitive. What can Stuart do to improve the performance of his database application?
| A. | Install more memory in his server. |
| B. | Install a faster disk subsystem in his server. |
| C. | Install a faster NIC in his server. |
| D. | Use Task Manager to set his application to a higher priority. |
| | 6. | You are the administrator for a small sporting goods company. The Human Resources manager of your company loads an application on a Windows Server 2003 Terminal Server which is located in an OU named Terminal Servers. The users of the terminal server report unacceptable response times. To investigate, you log on to the server and start up Task Manager, and you see that the average CPU usage is more than 80%. However, when you look at the Processes tab, none of the processes shown are showing any measurable activity. What should you do to make the offending process visible?
| A. | In Task Manager, select the Show Processes from All Users option. |
| B. | From a command prompt, run the query process command. |
| C. | Open the Terminal Services Manager. Select the server from the list of servers, and then select the Processes tab. |
| D. | Edit the Group Policy object (GPO) for the Terminal Servers OU and add your user account to the "Profile a single process" policy. Then use Task Manager to reexamine the server. |
| | 7. | You are the network administrator for your company. You have a file server that is heavily used. Users are complaining about excessive slowdowns, usually during the evening. You have examined the processor, memory and disk performance, but everything seems to be within normal limits. What should you do?
| A. | Use Task Manager to review network utilization. |
| B. | Use Task Manager to record network utilization for later review. |
| C. | Use System Monitor to record network utilization for later review. |
| D. | Use Performance Logs and Alerts to record network utilization for later review. |
| | | | 8. | As part of a server consolidation, you are moving a group of shared folders to a new Windows Server 2003 server. Unfortunately, this new server has significantly less space than the server it replaced. You will need to store older files offline when the free space falls below a specific amount. What is the most efficient way to track free space?
| A. | Start System Monitor. Configure it to monitor PhysicalDisk:%Free Space. Set it to send a message when the Free Space falls below a specified percentage. |
| B. | Start System Monitor. Configure it to monitor LogicalDisk:%Free Space. Set it to send a message when the Free Space falls below a specified percentage. |
| C. | Start Performance Logs and Alerts. Configure it to monitor LogicalDisk:%Free Space. Set it to send a message when the Free Space falls below a specified percentage. |
| D. | Start Performance Logs and Alerts. Configure it to monitor PhysicalDisk:%Free Space. Set it to send a message when the Free Space falls below a specified percentage. |
| | 9. | Frank is the system administrator for Fudge Inc. His users have been complaining about the response time on one of his Windows Server 2003 file and print servers. He ran Performance Logs and Alerts for a couple of days and came up with the following average values: Processor: %Processor Time: 80% System Processor Queue Length: 2 PhysicalDisk: Avg. Disk Queue Length: 6 Memory: Pages Input/sec: 5
What should Frank do?
| A. | Add more RAM. |
| B. | Add a faster disk. |
| C. | Add an additional processor. |
| D. | Get a better NIC. |
| | 10. | You are the network administrator for FlyByNight Airlines. The network consists of a single Active Directory domain. All network servers run Windows Server 2003 Standard Edition. Your company has just bought a smaller airline, and you need to make sure that the employees from the new airline can access the HR application with decent performance. The HR application typically produces a high volume of disk activity. What counter should you monitor?
| A. | The % Disk Time counter for the PhysicalDisk performance object |
| B. | The Average Disk Queue Length counter for the PhysicalDisk performance object |
| C. | The Free Gbytes counter for the LogicalDisk performance object |
| D. | The File Transfers/sec counter for the LogicalDisk performance object |
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Answers to Exam Questions | 1. | C. When a process is set to Realtime, it is unable to respond to external input. Changing the base priority of an application to Realtime makes the priority of an application higher than the process that monitors and responds to keyboard input. The second step in Mary's application test requires keyboard input. The application, therefore, would hang, and Mary would be required to reboot. However, the database application doesn't need keyboard input, so setting it to Realtime wouldn't be a problem. See the "Understanding Priority" section for more information. | | 2. | D. Although the Disk Time counter is excessively high, so is the Paging File usage. When the paging file usage is extremely high, that means that the server is constantly swapping to disk, which is a pretty good indication that the server is running out of physical memory. See the "Monitoring Memory Performance Objects" section for more information. | | 3. | D. Nothing, all disk counters are enabled by default in Windows Server 2003. See the "Monitoring Disk Performance Objects" section for more information. | | 4. | C. Both the processor time and the processor queue length are suspect. An average processor time of 80% by itself would be a problem, but the processor queue length should never get above 2 for an extended period of time. See the "Monitoring Process Performance Objects" section for more information. | | 5. | D. Because you weren't given any performance measurements in this question, you have no way of knowing whether any of the components mentioned are being stressed. However, because the database application is a background process and is running with other applications, setting Stuart's database application to a higher priority should give it a little more processing time. See the "Understanding Priority" section for more information. | | 6. | A. The default view shows the processes running for the currently logged-on user, but the processes for all users can be shown by selecting the Show Processes from All Users check box in the lower-left corner of the dialog box. See the "Processes Tab" section for more information. | | 7. | D. The only workable answer is D. Performance Logs and Alerts can be set to automatically record performance data for later review, which is good because the problem occurs in the evening when you probably won't be working. System Monitor and Task Manager are mostly used for looking at real-time events. See the "Performance Logs" section for more information. | | | | 8. | C. The Alerts function of Performance Logs and Alerts is used to define threshold alerts. These can be used with real-time measurements or with historical log files. An alert is issued when a specific counter crosses a defined threshold value. When this occurs, a trigger event is initiated. Free Space is tracked by LogicalDisk, not PhysicalDisk. See the "Performance Alerts" section for more information. | | 9. | A. Although the processor utilization is high, the Memory :Pages Input/sec and Physical Disk: Avg. Disk Queue Length results indicate that most processes are being swapped out to disk. This indicates that the server doesn't have enough RAM. See the "Monitoring Memory Performance Objects" section for more information. | | 10. | A. The Disk Time counter tracks the percentage of time that the drive is servicing R/W requests. A high number indicates that the disk is extremely busy. The other counters listed do not exist. See the "Monitoring Disk Performance Objects" section for more information. |
Suggested Readings and Resources 1. Morimoto, Rand; Noel, Michael; Lewis, Alex. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Unleashed (R2 Edition). Sams Publishing, 2006. ISBN 0672328984. 2. Performance Monitoring Best Practices. http://technet2.microsoft.com/WindowsServer/en/Library/204bb1a3-713b-4ba3-9a9b-98ca46a3076b1033.mspx?mfr=true. 3. Stanek, William. Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Administrator's Pocket Consultant. Microsoft Press, 2003. ISBN 0735613540. 4. Windows Server 2003 Deployment Guide. Microsoft Corporation. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/reskit/deploykit.mspx. 5. Windows Server 2003 Performance Tuning. http://www.windowsnetworking.com/articles_tutorials/Windows-Server-2003-Performance-Tuning.html. 6. Windows Server 2003 Resource Kit. Microsoft Corporation. Look for a link to it on the Technical Resources for Windows Server 2003 page. http://www.microsoft.com/windowsserver2003/techinfo/default.mspx. |
