Performance is one of the major areas in IT field. Performance of a system depends on both systems as well as application performance. We can observe or verify the performance of a system by using the Windows Performance Monitor. Performance monitor can be used to collect performance counters associated with the system as well as applications in real time or by collecting log data for later analysis.

Windows Performance Monitor uses performance counters, event trace data, and configuration information, which can be combined into Data Collector Sets.

Performance counters are measurements of system state or activity. They can be included in the operating system or can be part of individual applications. Windows Performance Monitor requests the current value of performance counters at specified time intervals.

Event trace data is collected from trace providers, which are components of the operating system or of individual applications that report actions or events. Output from multiple trace providers can be combined into a trace session.

Configuration information is collected from key values in the Windows registry. Windows Performance Monitor can record the value of a registry key at a specified time or interval as part of a log file.

Performance Monitor

Open the performance monitor using Start -> Run -> perfmon

Click on the Performance Monitor under Monitoring tools. This will show the current performance counter data in a graph format.

Performance Monitor

We can add more counters to the set by right clicking and selecting Add Counters.

Performance Monitor - Add Counters

Select the system, which you want to observe. Here, I selected my local system to check the status. Select a group from the available performance counters groups. For example,  I want to know about the performance of ReportServer database, so selected the SQL Server: Database -> ReportServer.

Add Counters

We can add any number of counters using this Add Counter window. All added counters will appear in your Monitor and show the current status.

In next article, we will see how we can record the performance data for a long time and analyze it latter.