Who's Using Resources on My Server?

One of my favourite analytical pages is Perfmon by Process. This page shows me which Windows processes are using my critical resources, such as Processor, IO, page file and virtual bytes. When you click on this link, it will show you the critical resources and for each of the last three hours, it shows you which process has been the biggest consumer. The two charts on the right show you the top 10 consumers for the critical resource you have selected on the left (scorecard). By default, the selection is %Processor Time, but you can click on others. My favourite is IO Data Bytes/sec, since this tends to be the most critical resource in a large database system. Try clicking on IO Data Bytes/sec and other counters. See how the grraphs on the right change dynamically, and will show you real time analysis for the last 60 minutes and last 60 hours.

This is just a demonstration. If you have a large production system, do you have such analytical tools available to you? If you don't, I would suggest that you are operating blind, and that you should get some. The toolset I have created uses nothing but SQL Server 2005/2008 and PerformancePoint (for visualisation). In fact, it's so simple, I would like Microsoft to have something like it available as an optional install from SQL Server.

There are lots more real-time demonstrations on http://RichardLees.com.au