Recording Performance Over Time

You can use Windows NT Performance Monitor to record server performance over extended periods of time. You can work with the recorded information as you would with current activity, using Performance Monitor to create reports and charts for analyzing the activity. This information can help you identify performance problems and plan upgrades to your server's capacity. For detailed information about using Performance Monitor, see the Windows NT documentation.

To record performance over time

Click Start, point to Programs, point to Administrative Tools, and then click Performance Monitor.
On the View menu, click Log.
On the Edit menu, click Add to Log.
In the Computer box, select your workstation or server, or type the name of a computer you want to record information for.
In the Object list, select FTP Service, Web Service, Active Server Pages, or Internet Information Services Global, and then click Add. Repeat until you have added all the objects you are interested in, then click Done.

A full set of counters will be recorded for each object. For information about counters, see the related topics listed below.

On the Options menu, click Log.
In the File name box, type a name for your log file.
Under Update Time, choose Periodic Update and select or type a time interval (in seconds).
To begin logging, click Start Log.

The Log Options dialog box closes, and logging begins. The size of the log file is displayed in the lower right corner of Performance Monitor.

After an appropriate period of time (long enough to record the trends you are studying), on the Options menu, click Log, and in the resulting dialog box, click Stop Log.
To view the log, on the Options menu, click Data from; in the resulting dialog box, select Log File and type the filename, then click OK. You can switch to Chart view or Report view to analyze the data as if it were current activity.