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Monitor FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint using performance counters

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Applies to: FAST Search Server 2010

Performance counters can be accessed using the Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor tool (perfmon), System Center Operations Manger 2007, scripting, .NET, Windows PowerShell, Win32 APIs, etc.

Most FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint performance counter category names use the prefix FAST Search, for example FAST Search Indexer. The performance counters related to the indexing connectors used by the FAST Search Content Search Service Application are represented by the OSS Search FAST Content Plugin performance counter category.

For an overview of all the FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint performance counters, refer to Performance counters (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint).

Examples of how to retrieve performance counter information

The following two examples show how you can monitor FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint using performance counters.

How to get a real-time overview of FAST Search performance counters in perfmon

  1. Open the Windows Reliability and Performance Monitor (perfmon).

  2. Remove any existing counters from the view.

  3. Add counters, with the green ”+” icon (or use Ctrl+i) for one or more related performance counter categories.

  4. Click Action, then click Properties, then click General and set to Sample every to 3-10 seconds.

  5. Switch to Report view. Click Action, then click Properties, then click Graph, then click View (or Ctrl+G twice) to quickly get an overview of the data.

  6. Click Use File and then Save As to create an .MMC file with this configuration.

  7. Repeat this process to create views for different sets of performance counters.

You can double-click the saved .MMC files later to open the saved performance counter configuration/view.

How to read performance counters using Windows PowerShell 2.0

You can use the Windows PowerShell 2.0 Get-Counter commandlet to read performance counter data.

  1. On the Start menu, click All Programs.

  2. Click a Microsoft Windows PowerShell 2.0 shell.

  3. At the Windows PowerShell command prompt, type the command(s) in the syntax as found in the Get-Counter commandlet reference:

    Get-Counter -Counter "\<Performance Counter category name>\<Performance Counter>" [-ComputerName <string[]>] [-Continuous][-MaxSamples <Int64>][-SampleInterval <int>] [<CommonParameters>]

    Where:

    • <Performance Counter category name> is the name of the performance counter category.

    • <Performance Counter> is the name of the performance counter.

    See Performance counters (FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint) for reference information for performance counter categories and individual counter names.

For example, type the following command to read the performance counter for the number of queries per second from FAST Search Server 2010 for SharePoint QRServer instances:

Get-Counter -Counter "\FAST Search QRServer(*)\# of Queries/sec" -SampleInterval 5 -MaxSamples 1