Performance Monitor

Basic Usage

1. Starting Performance Monitor
2. Adding/Removing counters
3. Network considerations of remote counters
4. Graph types
5. Highlighting counters
6. Show/hide console tree

Performance counters

1. Counter paths
2. Counter descriptions
3. Overhead of viewing counters
4. Special counter instances
5. PID in process instances
6. Understanding the fields
7. Scaling counters
8. Changing the scale of the chart
9. Pattern matching

Creating a data collector

1. Using the wizard
2. From a template
3. Using the command line
4. Remotely
5. Using PowerShell

Modifying data collector sets

1. Starting and stopping data collector sets
2. Data Collector Set properties
3. Data Collector properties
4. Saving a template
5. Creating a data collector set from a template
6. Contents of a template
7. SQL Server named instances
8. Using the PAL tool to create data collector templates.
9. Sample counter log templates provided at [HTTP address] for various products.
10. Viewing a counter log

Performance Monitor related tools

Logman

1. Security considerations
2. Common parameters
3. Querying data collectors
4. Creating a data collector on another computer
5. Creating a data collector using a counter list file
6. Creating a binary circular data collector
7. Deleting a data collector
8. Managing data collectors on remote computers
9. Starting and stopping data collectors
10. PowerShell

LODCTR

1. Detecting corrupt counters
2. Performance counters are in a linked list.
3. Repairing operating system counters.
4. Rebuilding application counters

Relog

1. Log merging
2. Filtering
3. Converting log format

PowerShell

1. Get-Counter
2. Import-Counter
3. Export-Counter
4. Get-OdbcPerfCounter
5. Enable-OdbcPerfCounter
6. Disable-OdbcPerfCounter

Storage Media

1. Initial indicators of storage media conditions
2. Disk in Depth
3. What's new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 2012
4. Storage concepts
5. Terminology
6. I/O operations per second (IOPS)
7. Dedicated spindles compared to shared spindles
8. Physical disks compared to logical disks
9. Choosing a RAID type
10. Software RAID compared to hardware RAID
11. Partition alignment
12. Strip size
13. I/O request packes (IRPs) and disk queues
14. I/O priorities
15. Processor conditions that can lead to poor storage performance
16. How storage counter data is gathered
17. PhysicalDisk and LogicalDisk counter objects
18. How free space conditions can lead to poor storage performance
19. The disk queue and idle time
20. Disk transfers
21. Measuring I/O sizes and split I/O
22. How I/O size effects response times
23. How to measure storage response times
24. Storage related process counters
25. Hyper-V storage counters and considerations
26. Identifying storage performance conditions
27. Analyzing storage performance
28. Disk fragmentation and storage performance
29. Identifying storage media failures
30. Balancing power and storage performance
31. Storport tracing
32. How to look at Storport ETW Trace logs?

Virtual Memory

1. Initial indicators of virtual memory conditions
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. Supplementary counters and thresholds
4. The 32-bit x86 Virtual address space
5. The 64-bit IA64 virtual address space
6. The 64-bit x64 virtual address space
7. Why is x64 at 16 TB instead of 16 EB?
8. Many processes. One kernel
9. The advantages of virtual memory
10. Virtual memory and paging files
11. Understanding the "Virtual memory minimum too low" error message
12. Understanding process virtual address space
13. How to determine the maximum virtual address space of a process
14. Identifying application out of memory conditions
15. Troubleshooting application out of memory conditions
16. Working around application out of memory conditions
17. Understanding reserved, committed, and free process memory
18. Dynamic and static kernel virtual memory
19. How to determine the maximum size of kernel virtual memory pools using LiveKD or WinDBG
20. How to determine the maximum size of kernel virtual memory pools Using Process Explorer
21. Troubleshooting Pool Paged and Pool NonPaged kernel memory
22. Understanding the PFN database, RAM, and virtual memory
23. Troubleshooting lack of System Page Table Entry (PTE) conditions
24. Altering the 32-bit virtual address space
25. Setting IncreaseUserVa with BCDEdit
26. How to identify if an executable is large address aware
27. Adjusting UserVA
28. Understanding Address Width Extensions (AWE)
29. How RAM impacts virtual address space
30. Balancing power and performance
31. Case studies

Physical Memory, Paging Files, and System Committed Memory

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. Physical memory limits in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
4. Monitoring the system commit limit
5. Monitoring the system commit charge
6. When the system commit limit is reached
7. Hot-plug memory
8. Free space and paging file considerations
9. Page file sizing and monitoring
10. The maximum number of page files
11. Paging files and Crash dumps
12. Dedicated dump files
13. Accommodating the system commit charge peak
14. What is written to a paging file?
15. Monitoring modified memory
16. Working Set trimming
17. Pages/sec can be misleading
18. The maximum size of a paging file
19. Page file fragmentation
20. Does having more than one page file help with performance?
21. How physical memory is managed
22. Page Frame Number (PFN) database
23. The page file writer and the lazy writer
24. Identifying a low physical memory condition
25. Using Process Monitor to monitor reads and writes to a paging file
26. Where did all of the physical memory go?
27. Monitoring the kernel memory usage
28. Pages locked in memory
29. Hard page faults and hard drive performance
30. Hard page faults and paging files
31. Sizing RAM for new or used systems
32. Available versus free memory
33. Monioring Ready Boost performance
34. Prefetch and Superfetch performance
35. How process memory allocations effect physical resources
36. What is a process working set?
37. Monitoring process working sets
38. Soft page faults and hard page faults
39. Sharable and shared memory
40. When working sets trim and a paging file increases
41. When working sets trim, but no paging file has increased
42. Identifying a process working set leak
43. The effects of setting a minimum or maximum process working set size
44. Managing large working sets
45. Pages locked in memory
46. Memory profiling an application
47. Do EXE and DLL sizes affect the working set?
48. Comparing process committed memory and process working sets
49. How much process memory is on the page file?
50. Monioring the performance of the .NET Garbage Collector
51. Identifying a memory leak using Performance Monitor
52. Identifying a memory leak using Process Explorer
53. Troubleshooting a memory leak using VMMap
54. Troubleshooting a memory leak using DebugDiag
55. Troubleshooting a memory leak using Server Performance Advisor 3.0
56. Troubleshooting a memory leak using UMDH
57. Troubleshooting a memory leak using WinDBG
58. Troubleshooting physical memory conditions on a Hyper-V host
59. Balancing power and performance
60. Case studies

Network

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. Monitoring bandwidth and utilization
4. Queuing and other considerations
5. Identifying high network usage
6. Analyzing high network usage using Resource Monitor
7. Analyzing high network usage using Process Monitor
8. Analyzing high network usage using Microsoft xperf
9. Identifying network conditions on Hyper-V
10. Case studies

Startup and Shutdown

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. ReadyBoot
4. Capturing boot performance using bootmgr.exe.
5. Analyzing the ETL trace.
6. Capturing boot performance using Process Monitor
7. Capturing shutdown performance
8. Example: Disk drive set to “quiet” mode.
9. Hyper-V considerations
10. Balancing power and performance
11. Case studies

Processor

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. Terminology
4. The Idle processIdentifying high processor usage using Task Manager
5. Identifying high processor usage using Performance Monitor
6. Identifying high processor usage using Resource Monitor
7. Identifying high processor usage using Process Explorer
8. Identifying high processor usage on Hyper-V
9. Identifying user mode or privileged mode processor usage
10. Identifying high DPC or interrupt processor usage
11. Identifying high processor usage by process
12. Identifying low processor usage
13. Analyzing high privileged mode processor usage using Microsoft xperf
14. Analyzing high privileged mode processor usage using the Microsoft Visual Studio Profiler
15. Analyzing high privileged mode processor usage using the Debugging Tools for Windows
16. Processor affinity and thread priority
17. Context switching and transitions
18. NUMA computer systems
19. Balancing power and performance
20. Case studies

Startup and Shutdown

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. ReadyBoot
4. Capturing boot performance using bootmgr.exe.
5. Analyzing the ETL trace.
6. Capturing boot performance using Process Monitor
7. Capturing shutdown performance
8. Example: Disk drive set to “quiet” mode.
9. Hyper-V considerations
10. Balancing power and performance
11. Case studies

Hyper-V

1. Initial indicators
2. What’s new in Windows 8 and Windows Server 8
3. Terminology
4. Hyper-V Architecture
5. Hardware selection
6. Analyzing physical memory and paging file performance
7. Analyzing storage performance
8. Virtual hard drive considerations
9. Analyzing network performance
10. Balancing power and performance
    Case studies

Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL) Tool

1. Choosing a threshold file
2. Collecting counter log data
3. Analyzing the counter log
4. Interpreting the report

Microsoft xperf

1. What is ETW?
2. ETW versus performance counters
3. Collecting an Event Tracing for Windows log (ETL)
4. Analyzing the ETL file
5. An end-to-end tracing with ETW example

Microsoft Semantic Logging Application Block

1. EventSource tutorial
2. Overview of Semantic Logging
3. Video walkthrough
4. Get it via NuGet

Microsoft Server Performance Advisor (SPA) 3.0

1. Collecting data
2. Analyzing the report

Process dumps

1. Using operating system tools
2. Using ProcDump
3. Using the Debugging Tools for Windows
4. Checking the dump file

Debug symbols

1. What are debug symbols?
2. The symbol path
3. Using the Microsoft symbol server
4. Creating and maintaining a symbol server
5. When internet access is not available