Performance Monitoring Software

[Hightower]

Hey all,

I'm using some software for a proxy server on a Windows XP box. At the minute only about 20 pupils are directed through this proxy but we are wanting to slowly increase it.

At the minute the proxy is installed on a little desktop and I'm not exactly sure how much it can handle so can anyone recommend some good free software that will log the performance and I can review it at the end of each day?

So I can see how it handles with 20/30/50/100 etc users on it and see how many it will take before it starts to struggle.

Many thanks,

[Gibbo]

Squid on a Linux box?

[Hightower]

Squid on a Linux box?

Hmmm, need something that I can install on the actually box.

[bossman]

IPcop full distro, also with this installed on its own box it will not hit the 10 concurrent connections unlike the windows XP box you have at the moment.

@Hightower if you need a hand just PM.

[sahmeepee]

You can use Windows performance monitor to monitor the performance of remote PCs. Just do:

start>run>perfmon
remove the 3 default counters
right-click on the graph to add counters
choose your remote xp machine
choose a relevant counter (e.g. total CPU)
choose a relevant counter (e.g. disk queue length)
(...repeat as necessary)
click close

[Hightower]

IPcop full distro, also with this installed on its own box it will not hit the 10 concurrent connections unlike the windows XP box you have at the moment.

Cheers mate - but although XP has only 10 connections it seems to work for my proxy for more to be connected.

It definately worked at Peterlee with ~700 kids on it.

[Hightower]

You can use Windows performance monitor to monitor the performance of remote PCs. Just do:

start>run>perfmon
remove the 3 default counters
right-click on the graph to add counters
choose your remote xp machine
choose a relevant counter (e.g. total CPU)
choose a relevant counter (e.g. disk queue length)
(...repeat as necessary)
click close

Ideal - cheers!

[Zimmer]

You can use Windows performance monitor to monitor the performance of remote PCs. Just do:

start>run>perfmon
remove the 3 default counters
right-click on the graph to add counters
choose your remote xp machine
choose a relevant counter (e.g. total CPU)
choose a relevant counter (e.g. disk queue length)
(...repeat as necessary)
click close

I agree, the parsing of Windows performance logs are very powerful tools that are massively under used by many admins.

We use perfmon to monitor most of our servers basic activities.

With your proxy watch out for disk IO, if you have setup your proxy to cache content then the primary bottleneck is probably going to be the disk access speed.

[Geoff]

BTW, perfmon has had an overhaul in Vista/2k8 and is much easier to use.

[sahmeepee]

BTW, perfmon has had an overhaul in Vista/2k8 and is much easier to use.

It's better in some ways, but saving your counter settings is still a tad lame.

I went on a Microsoft course where they said you can't save the settings from perfmon - not true: you can click the button to copy the counter settings to the clipboard, then paste them into a notepad document and save it. To restore the settings (e.g. after a reboot), copy the text out of the notepad doc and click the paste button in perfmon. Bing!