Windows Server - Performance Counter

Guidance

Traditionally we have shied away from noting specific values or thresholds that
are indicative of good or bad performance. One reason for this is because
coming up with good values is quite hard to do, and people sometimes see that a
particular value is outside of some threshold and become fixated on that being
the issue when in reality it may not be. For example, the Windows NT Resource
Kit had a section that stated that a disk queue length greater than two to three
times the number of disk spindles was indicative of a performance problem.
When working with SQL Server this is not always true, especially if read ahead
activity is driving the disk queue length. Just because there is a queue waiting for
IO does not necessarily mean that SQL Server is stalled waiting for the IO to
complete. We have seen disk queue lengths up in the 20-30 range (on much
fewer than 10 disks) where SQL Server performance was just fine.

However, in the absence of specific values people sometimes look at

Performance Monitor data and fail to spot interesting trends. So despite the
hesitation to provide any specific values, we will attempt to note some
thresholds where a given counter starts to attract the interest of those
who have been working some of these cases over the past several
years. Hopefully this will provide you some guidance in things that
stand out. But ultimately, you will need to look for other counters that
also seem out of range so that you can start developing a pattern of
indicators that point to a particular type of problem.

It should be fairly easy for you to visually identify a counter whose value
changed substantially during a problematic time period. Quite often you will find
that there are many counters that changed significantly. With a blocking
problem, for example, you might see user connections, lock waits and lock wait
time all increase while batch requests/sec decreases. If you focused solely on
a particular counter (or a few counters) you might come to some very
different conclusions about what the problem is, and you could very
likely be wrong. Some of the changes in counter values are the cause of the
original problem, whereas others are just side affects from that problem.

In the ideal situation, the change in the counters that indicate the
cause of the problem should lead the counters showing the affect, but
due to the granularity used to capture Performance Monitor data some
of these distinctions can be lost. If you collect data once every 15 seconds
and the problem was of quick onset, it can be hard to figure out if user
connections went up first and then lock timeouts, or vice versa. This is where
you have to use other available information, such as other performance
counters, the customer’s description of the problem, etc, to form a theory as to
what you think may be wrong and then look for other supporting data to prove or
disprove your theory.

Performance Non-Disk Counters

Object Counter Preferred Description
Value

Memory Available > 100MB Available MBytes is the amount of

Mbytes physical memory available to
processes running on the
computer, in Megabytes.

Memory Pages < 10 Pages Input/sec is the rate at

Input/Sec which pages are read from disk to
resolve hard page faults. See KB
889654.

Memory Pages/Sec See Pages/sec is the rate at which

Description pages are read from or written to
disk to resolve hard page faults.
This counter is a primary indicator
of the kinds of faults that cause
system-wide delays. Investigate if
over 100 pages per second on a
system with a slow disk, usually
even 500 pages per second on a
system with a fast disk subsystem
may not be an issue.

Note:

• Values of >20 pages that

appear in many other sources
of documentation are out of
date.
• A high value for the Memory:
Pages/sec counter does not
necessarily indicate memory
pressure or a System Monitor
reporting error. To gain an
accurate reading of your
system, you must also monitor
other counters (Pages
 Input/Sec, %Usage, %Usage
Peak). See KB 889654.

Performance Non-Disk Counters contd ..

Object Counter Preferred Description
Value

Paging File %Usage < 70% The amount of the Page File instance
in use in percent. See KB 889654.

Paging File %Usage Peak < 70% The peak usage of the Page File
instance in percent. See KB 889654.

Process %Processor < 80% % Processor Time is the percentage

(sqlservr) Time of elapsed time that all of process
threads used the processor to
execution instructions. An instruction
is the basic unit of execution in a
computer, a thread is the object that
executes instructions, and a process
is the object created when a program
is run. Code executed to handle some
hardware interrupts and trap
conditions are included in this count.

Process %Processor < 80% For the SSAS.

(msmdsrv) Time
80% is for a server which is
dedicated to SSAS.

Processor %Privileged < 30% of Total % Privileged Time is the percentage

Time %Processor of elapsed time that the process
Time threads spent executing code in
privileged mode.

Processor %Processor < 80% % Processor Time is the percentage

Time of elapsed time that the processor
spends to execute a non-Idle thread.

System Processor < 4 per CPU For standard servers with long
Queue Length Quantums
<= 4 per CPU Excellent
< 8 per CPU Good
< 12 per CPU Fair
Performance Disk Counters
When the data files are places on a SAN ignore the following!! Use the
performance tools provided by the SAN vendor instead

Object Counter Preferred Description

Value

PhysicalDisk Avg. Disk < 8ms Measure of disk latency. Avg. Disk
Sec/Read sec/Read is the average time, in
seconds, of a read of data from
the disk.
More Info:
Reads
Excellent < 08 Msec ( .008
seconds )
Good < 12 Msec ( .012
seconds )
Fair < 20 Msec ( .020
seconds )
Poor > 20 Msec ( .020 seconds
)

PhysicalDisk Avg. Disk < 8ms (non Measure of disk latency. Avg. Disk
sec/Write cached) sec/Write is the average time, in
seconds, of a write of data to the
disk.

< 1ms
(cached)
Non cached Writes
Excellent < 08 Msec ( .008
seconds )
Good < 12 Msec ( .012
seconds )
Fair < 20 Msec ( .020
seconds )
Poor > 20 Msec ( .020 seconds
)

Cached Writes Only

Excellent < 01 Msec ( .001
seconds )
Good < 02 Msec ( .002
seconds )
Fair < 04 Msec ( .004
seconds )
Poor > 04 Msec ( .004 seconds