Monitoring Performance

Monitoring the performance of Chat Service involves measuring its responsiveness to service requests. Performance monitoring indicates whether the service is performing as expected and warns you about processing delays and latencies that require your attention.

Monitoring Chat Service performance allows you to ensure that hardware resources, such as CPU and memory, are adequately servicing Chat Service requests. In general, the three hardware resources you need to monitor are CPU utilization, disk swapping rate, and memory utilization.

To track data, Performance Monitor uses a series of counters such as memory utilization, the number of network packets transmitted per second, and the percentage of CPU utilization. You can configure Performance Monitor to observe real-time performance or to store data in logs for later examination and analysis.

Use the following counters for monitoring Chat Service performance:

% Processor Time (Processor object). More than 80 percent indicates that the server is receiving more messages than it can process, or that the server is under attack.
Available Bytes (Memory object). Less than 10 percent of available free memory can indicate excessive processing or a software error.
Clients Messages Received/sec and Client Messages Sent/sec (Chat Service object). Low values in these counters combined with a high user load can indicate network problems.
Current Local Clients (Chat Service object). A value of zero for an extended period of time can indicate problems reaching the chat server.
Total Authentication Failures (Chat Service object). More than one failed authentication can indicate that Chat Service is having trouble connecting to the server.

Performance Counters that Indicate Hardware Limitations

The following problems are typically encountered on servers that do not meet the minimum recommended configuration.

Note The minimum recommended configuration is a computer with an Intel® Pentium 60 MHz processor (or a Digital Alpha™ 4/275) and at least 64 MB of RAM.

Available Bytes (Memory object). If this counter shows a low value, the chat server is running out of memory. To solve this problem, decrease the number of allowed client connections or increase the amount of server memory.
% Total Processor Time (System object). If this counter remains consistently high, the CPU is at 100 percent. To solve this problem, decrease the number of allowed client connections or increase the number or speed of processors on the server.
Private Bytes (Process object, chatsvc instance). If this counter gets to within 20 MB of the total physical memory on the server, the system may start paging memory. This results in a loss of performance.

For more information on these counters, see the Windows NT Resource Kit.

Monitoring Real-Time Performance

To monitor real-time performance, use the Performance Monitor Chart window. You select an object to monitor and then add counters for the object. Under some conditions, you are presented with the different instances of the counter. For example, if you have three disk drives and you choose the Physical Disk object and % Disk Time for the counter, you have a choice of three instances, one for each drive. You can also add multiple counters for an object. Each counter you add appears as a graph line in the chart.

To monitor real-time performance

From the Start menu, choose Programs, choose Administrative Tools (Common), and then choose Performance Monitor.
From the Edit menu, choose Add To Chart.
Select the chat server you want to monitor.
From the Object drop-down menu, choose Chat Service.
Select a counter, and then choose Add. To add several counters at the same time, hold down the CTRL key while you select the counters.
To adjust the scale on a counter, double-click the counter name at the bottom of the screen. Select the Scale box, and then choose a scale.
Choose Done when you are finished.

To remove a counter

Select the counter.
From the Edit menu, choose Delete From Chart.

To add a counter to the chart

From the Edit menu, choose Add To Chart.