Performance Tool Helps Tune Windows Server

A free Server Performance Advisor (SPA) diagnostic tool will help administrators monitor various Windows server resources to determine the root cause of performance problems. Administrators can specify which performance parameters are analyzed and which thresholds are considered important, but the tool still requires experience and expertise to correctly interpret the data and take the necessary corrective steps.

Measuring Performance

Developed to diagnose root causes of performance problems with Windows Server 2003, particularly in Internet Information Services (IIS) 6.0 and the Active Directory (AD) service, SPA tracks information from data collectors-performance counters and event trace information-to determine which services and subsystems, such as the file system, networking, or processor, are stressed under the workload.

Performance counters. Windows performance data is collected from counters, which expose various measures of the performance of computing resources, applications, or services. For example, the disk subsystem on a Windows server exposes counters that indicate how fast data is being transferred to and from the disk.