Tip: Use Performance Monitoring to Track Exchange Messaging
When you are troubleshooting or optimizing a server for performance, you can use performance monitoring to track the activities of Exchange messaging components. Performance Monitor graphically displays statistics for the set of performance parameters you’ve selected for display. These performance parameters are referred to as counters. Performance Monitor displays information for only the counters you’re tracking. Thousands of counters are available, and these counters are organized into groupings called performance objects.
When you install Exchange Server 2007 on a computer, Performance Monitor is updated with a set of objects and counters for tracking Exchange performance. You’ll find dozens of related performance objects for everything from the Microsoft Exchange Availability Service to the Microsoft Exchange Journaling Agent to Microsoft Exchange Outlook Web Access.
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You can select which counters you want to monitor by completing the following steps:
1. In Exchange Management Console, select the Toolbox node, and then doubleclick Performance Monitor. This opens the Exchange Server Performance Monitor.
2. Select the System Monitor entry in the left pane.
3. The Performance Monitor tool has several views and view types. Ensure that you are viewing current activity by clicking View Current Activity on the toolbar or pressing Ctrl+T. You can switch between the view types, (Line, Histogram Bar, and Report) by clicking the Change Graph Type button or pressing Ctrl+G.
4. To add counters, click Add on the toolbar or press Ctrl+I. This displays the Add Counters dialog box.
5. In the Select Counters From Computer combo box, enter the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) name of the IIS server you want to work with, such as \\MailServer18 or choose <Local computer> to work with the local computer.
Note that you’ll need to be at least a member of the Performance Monitor Users group in the domain or the local computer to perform remote monitoring. When you use performance logging, you’ll need to be at least a member of the Performance Log Users group in the domain or the local computer to work with performance logs on remote computers.
6. In the Available Counters panel, Performance Objects are listed alphabetically. If you select an object entry by clicking it, all related counters are selected. If you expand an object entry, you can see all the related counters and you can then select individual counters by clicking them. For example, you could expand the entry for the Active Server Pages object and then select Requests Failed Total, Requests Not Found, Requests Queued, and Requests Total counters.
7. When you select an object or any of its counters, you see the related instances.Choose All Instances to select all counter instances for monitoring. Or select one or more counter instances to monitor. For example, you could select instances of Anonymous Users/Sec for individual Web sites or for all Web sites.
8. When you’ve selected an object or a group of counters for an object as well as the object instances, click Add to add the counters to the graph. Repeat steps 5 through 7 to add other performance parameters.
9. Click Close when you’re finished adding counters. You can delete counters later by clicking their entry in the lower portion of the Performance window and then clicking Delete.
From the Microsoft Press book Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Administrator’s Pocket Consultant, Second Edition by William R. Stanek.
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