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Best workstation counters

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 16, 2010 2:50 AM

I'm trying to refine my monitoring sets for the workstations we monitor. At the moment, here are the following counters I have in a set:

Processor - % Processor Time
Paging File - % Usage
Memory - Available MBytes
Memory % Committed Bytes In Use
PhysicalDisk - Avg. Disk sec/Transfer
PhysicalDisk - Avg. Disk Queue Length
System - System Up Time

At one time, I did have the "PhysicalDisk - Disk Transfers/Sec" counter but it seemed all of workstations set off numerous alarms with that (even new workstations did). Then I'd check the other two PhysicalDisk counters I had above and they checked out okay, which was confusing and misleading it seemed like.

Does anyone have any other counters they use that are useful indicators on workstation machines? Preferably, does anyone have other good hard drive counters they can recommend?

Thanks in advance

Legacy Forum Name: Best workstation counters,
Legacy Posted By Username: dkbi

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 16, 2010 3:00 AM

The only useful hard disk performance monitor is "Logical disk avg. Disk Sec/transfer". It tells you how long the disk has to wait before it can read/write to the disk. The longer it has to wait, the busier the file system is. This is generally better to use, because the other values gets screwy if you have any type of RAID set up.

Mine is set to alert if the value is above 0.02 for 30 minutes.

Legacy Forum Name: Monitor Sets,
Legacy Posted By Username: Lmhansen

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 16, 2010 3:32 AM

What's this difference between using this counter under PhysicalDisk or LogicalDisk? As I said, these counters are being used mostly on workstation computers, so there are no RAID configurations or multiple disks used.

Is LogicalDisk more geared toward devices with RAID configurations? If it is placed alongside my current PhysicalDisk perfmon, shouldn't it read nearly the same?

Legacy Forum Name: Monitor Sets,
Legacy Posted By Username: dkbi

Posted by LegacyPoster

on Mar 16, 2010 4:00 AM

For systems with one disk, the values should be the same for physical disk and logical disk if the values exists for both (not all do). The point I was trying to convey is that the Avg. disk sec/transfer value is a great means of measuring how busy a disk is, regardless of the number of physical disks making up the logical volume.

Legacy Forum Name: Monitor Sets,
Legacy Posted By Username: Lmhansen

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