Network/Server load - monitoring and control

[BJG]

A number of complaints recently along the lines of "very slow today...applications hanging" etc. I'm not really sure where the bottleneck is, though I doubt the constant flood of updates issuing from Microsoft is helping any.

 

Any suggestions for simple, cheap, essential tools for monitoring network or server usage...? And any tips for a low-impact approach to managing WSUS?

 

Thanks!

[gaz350b]

1st of all you need to work out what you need to monitor once you know what applications are an issue make a list of what that application relies on.

I generally find nothing beats Event Logs (perhaps an app is reporting no privileges to do something?), Resource Monitor and Perfmon for monitoring/troubleshooting slowness .

 

Setup a screen dedicated to this next to your normal workstation. use the connect to another computer option so you can monitor client and servers that you suspect. get your people complaining to phone you as soon as things go slow.

 

Start at the client end, perhaps they just have too many things open? local disk under load (AV scanning?/windows updates ? ) application at constant 25% 50% 100%? perhaps something gone iffy with an application causing it to use too much cpu in the background (word is a good example it doesn't like being updated while its still in use and I've had to reinstall it)

 

is it an application that is using external resources? SQL? check CPU/Memory usage. SQL CPU usage should be spiky not constant mountain ridges (I've seen applications hanging due to SQL under extremely heavy load). hard drive Queue lengths should not be over the number of drives in that volume.