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Introduction to Performance Monitor - Alerts
This page will show you how to design Performance Monitor Alerts for Windows 2003 Servers.
An alert is like a guard that rings an alarm bell when an interesting event
occurs. Alerts are a great way of gaining information on intermittent
events.
If you take the time to design Alerts, then you will be rewarded with
advance knowledge of problems. As you research the triggers and
actions, so you will learn more about how a healthy operating system
functions.
Keep an eye out for similarities and differences between Logs and Alerts.
For example, Alerts show up in the Application Event Log where as log
counters are displayed in the Monitor. Surprisingly, Alerts can be
scheduled just in the way that you schedule Logs.
Performance Alert Topics
Our goal is to set an performance monitor alert when the processor reaches 70%. The method and screen shots are taken from Windows Server 2003, however the principles are valid for earlier Microsoft
operating systems.
Our first step is to launch the Performance Monitor. Perhaps you have added Performance Monitor to your MMC? Or else you can type perfmon in the run box. (See
Getting Started if you are stuck
Once Performance Monitor opens, make sure that you click Alerts in the left pane, if necessary expand the
Performance Logs and Alerts, see Diagram 1.
Now go
to the right pane and right click with the mouse, now select: New Alert Settings. When the filename box appears, give your alert
a meaningful name e.g. Processor.
Diagram 1 
Click on the Add button,
choose the default object Processor % Processor time. So far the
procedure is similar to setting a System Monitor trace, but now comes the
crucial difference. Find the Limit box and enter 70.
Observe that the adjacent box is set to 'Over', and now click Close, then
OK; see Diagram 2.
The Alerts have an extra Action tab, check the
default setting is, "Log an event in the application event log".
Later we will visit the Event Viewer and find the Alerts.
The Alert
settings are color coded, red means off, while green means sampling in
progress. I
control the alert by
selecting Start or Stop from the short cut menu.
Unless the processor is under stress, you are unlikely to get any
Alerts.
Test machines will not reach the 70 limit without a little help.
So, open a program like Word, the initial execution should fire the
alert. If you still do not get any Alerts, reduce the Limit to 30
and then try again. As a last resort, change the alert from
Over 70 to Under 70.
Needless to say, if the Alert is red then it is stopped and to start
it right click and select start. Now the Alert will be green.
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