MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION Essays - Computer Storage Devices

MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION Essays - Computer Storage Devices MONITORING AND OPTIMIZATION PERFORMANCE MONITOR AND NETWORK MONITOR PERFORMANCE MONITOR Windows NT Object Counters in Performance Monitor OBJECTPURPOSE CacheL2 cache performance Logical diskMass storage performance, including network storage MemoryMemory performance and usage ObjectsProcess and tread counts Paging fileVirtual memory usage Physical diskHD performance Process Performance of executing processes Processor Processor(s) performance SystemWindows NT performance Thread Individual thread performance You will also see objects for each network service installed. MONITORING FOR PROCESSOR BOTTLENECKS MAJOR PROCESSOR RELATED COUNTERS TO WATCH: Processor: %Processor Time - How busy the microprocessor is. Processor is a bottleneck if sustained >80% Processor: Interrupts/sec - Rate of service requests from peripheral devices. If you have a high rate of interrupts/sec with no corresponding hardware functions then you may have a bad piece of hardware. Should be between 100 and 1000. Spikes to 2000 are ok. System: Processor queue length - Number of threads waiting to be serviced. >2 then processor is a bottleneck. Queue length will always be zero unless you are also monitoring a thread specific counter (Context switches/sec is number of threads switched/sec by the processor and is good to use). MONITORING THE DISK FOR BOTTLENECKS IF THE DISK LIGHT IS ON ALL THE TIME, YOU NEED MORE RAM More Ram will increase the size of the disk cache and decrease page swapping to disk and will increase the apparent speed of the disk. Logical disk vs. Physical disk Two different objects in Performance monitor. Logical disk measures performance of stripe sets, volume sets and mapped network drives. Physical disk measures real transfers to and from actual hard disk or RAID set. Used to compare disks and to provide specific information about a disk. MAJOR DISK RELATED COUNTERS TO WATCH: Memory: Pages/sec shows the number of memory pages swapped out to disk per second. Useful with %disk time: modify the size of the page file and watch the result of these two disk counters. %Disk time does not directly measure the disk. It shows how much time the processor is spending servicing disk requests. Use with Processor: %Processor Time to determine if the disk is eating up the processor. Disk bytes per second shows how fast your disk is. Copy a big file and see if your disk is way fast or a piece of junk. Average disk bytes per transfer shows how big the average transfer is. Larger transfers are more efficient. Current Disk queue length shows how much data is waiting to be transferred to disk. A long queue means you need a faster disk. NOTE: You must enable disk counters, they are disabled by default and will cause a degradation of about 2% in performance due to processor load of the counter. To enable disk performance counters: type diskperf -y at the command prompt to enable auto counter startup at boot. Reboot. To disable disk performance counters: type diskperf -n at the command prompt to disable auto counter startup at boot. Reboot. NETWORK MONITOR Is a trimmed down version of what ships with SMS. Is installed by adding Network monitor tools and agent through the services tab of the network icon in control panel. Can provide real time and cumulative saved data. FOUR MAIN SECTIONS Bar graph in real time. Session statistics shows cumulative data about conversations taking place on the network in real time. Station statistics shows information on each conversation. You must specify the machine (station) you want to monitor and is cumulative for the monitoring period. Summary statistics are cumulative and show network, captured, per second, NIC (MAC), and NIC error statistics. Data can be filtered by protocol, computer address, or protocol properties. Filter by computer address to identify a NIC sending data frames when not in use (bad NIC). Netmon can be dual password protected and will let you identify other instances of Netmon running on the network. This is to prevent unauthorized users from capturing data to which they do not have permission to access. Conflict Sybex Network Press: MCSE NT Server 4 Study Guide says, ?The limited version of network monitor that ships with Windows NT Server does not support promiscuous mode. Therefore, it can capture only packets sent to the server or to all stations.? But? Windows NT Online Help for Performance Monitor says, The Nework Monitor agent collects statistics from the computer?s network adapter card by putting it in promiscuous mode.?

10 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Start Getting Important Stuff Done!

10 Ways to Stop Procrastinating and Start Getting Important Stuff Done! About a year ago, I decided it was time to create a customer service survey. So I went on line, found a surveying program and created some questions. I even went so far as to show it to my business coach, Susan Thomson, to get her feedback. She made some suggestions which I incorporated. Then I did what so many of us do mid-project, which was to sit on my butt. The survey sat there, all dressed up and nowhere to go. I didn’t send it to a single soul. Things go that way sometimes. I have a flip camera, for instance, that I bought two years ago and used for the first time†¦ ummm†¦ a month ago. Even then, I did not post the video I took with the camera. There are also certain collections of notes and papers – the ones I’m not sure what to do with – that gather dust in piles. And my new printer sat in its box on the floor of my office for a week before I finally pulled it out and set it up. All these tasks, and more, live in the realm of â€Å"Important, not Urgent,† one of the four quadrants identified by Steven Covey in his best-selling business management book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. Often, until something happens to make one of these items urgent (such as I need to print something and I can’t get my old printer to work), I am likely to procrastinate completing the task. Letting â€Å"Important, not Urgent† tasks fall by the wayside leads to a high-pressure life. If I wait until an item is urgent before doing it, then I set myself up for stress. Everything is always urgent! Plus I never get things done that would make a huge difference for me or my business, even though they might be high-priority tasks. Surveying my customers is one of those items that is highly important for my business, but not urgent. It will never get done if I wait for it to become urgent. I have found a few tricks that help me break through the wall of resistance that keeps â€Å"Important, not Urgent† things from getting done. 1. Take stock. Identify what’s important. Every quarter, I attend a meeting of small businesses through a business coaching organization, ActionCOACH. During these quarterly workdays, we go through exercises that are hugely valuable in getting perspective on our business priorities. This past January, client contact and assessment came up as a high priority for The Essay Expert. When I created my calendar of tasks to complete over the quarter, my stagnating client survey came up high on the list of things to do. 2. Break it down. Important tasks often seem overwhelming because they are multi-faceted. If I can break the tasks down into small, attackable pieces, then I stop feeling overwhelmed. I know I can do something like â€Å"Call virtual assistant to talk about survey options.† It’s so much less intimidating than â€Å"Survey all my past clients.† 3. Put it on the calendar. If my calendar tells me to â€Å"Prepare survey† or â€Å"create list of emails for survey recipients† at a certain date and time, I will either do it at that date and time or reschedule it so it gets done. I am a slave to my calendar and that’s a good thing. After my quarterly workday in January, survey-related tasks went onto my calendar. They started to get done. [This calendaring system is how I get my blog written every week as well. It’s on my calendar, so I do it!] 4. Make promises to other people. Create accountability! In my January blog article, The Essay Expert’s New Year’s â€Å"Ressaylutions†- Completing 2011 and Creating 2012, I promised you that I would be sending out a client survey. Suddenly I became accountable to someone else. Since I wanted to announce at the end of 2012 that I did what I promised, I got into action! 5. Get help. It didn’t take me long to realize that I was not going to do this survey thing on my own. So I got help. My new virtual assistant, Jeanne, handled some of the logistical pieces of getting the survey finalized and sent out. I asked my web designer to take care of creating a new email address, clientsurvey@theessayexpert.com, for purposes of administering the survey. Getting the support I needed accelerated the project tremendously. 6. Know the tools at your disposal. If you’re sending out a survey, it helps to use Survey Monkey. If you want to get piles of notes and papers off your desk, it helps to use a scanner and the brilliant cloud-based note-organizing program Evernote (www.evernote.com). If you draw on your resources, you will almost always find an easier and/or alternative way to do what you’ve been putting off. Ask around. Be on the lookout for new tools and techniques. Those overwhelming tasks might not be as complicated as you had imagined. 7. Take action. It always comes down to just doing it. If I don’t take action, then regardless of how many action items are on my calendar, I won’t get results. If I take action, especially well-considered action (see #1-6), I have a fighting chance! 8. Keep taking action. This item might sound a lot like #7. But it’s different. Someone very smart said that the secret to getting results in life is to keep taking action until you get them. You might take initial action, not get the result you want, and promptly give up. The key to getting important stuff done is to stay in action even when things look like they’re not working or not going fast enough. If you give up on taking action, you give up on your results. 9. Take responsibility. Whether your important tasks are getting done or not, you are the one who is responsible for the situation. Blaming outside circumstances (â€Å"The survey program wouldn’t let me ask the questions I wanted to ask!† or â€Å"I don’t have time!†) will stall you out. In the survey project, many things interrupted me and presented obstacles. I chose to find a way around them. 10. Celebrate! I am going to celebrate getting my survey out. Sure, there will be a whole set of new tasks to conquer when this one is complete. But first it’s time to acknowledge what got done. And it IS going out!! Step by step, with lots of support along the way, I completed this important task. If you are a past client, you probably got an email yesterday requesting that you complete The Essay Expert’s client survey. If not, please take some time to respond now. TEE Client Survey. I look forward to being able to report on the results! I’d love to hear what tasks you are putting off that might get done if you put the eight items above into action. What progress will you be able to celebrate three months from now? 🙂 Log in to Reply The Essay Expert says: February 22, 2012 at 9:58 am Youre welcome Jan! Id love to hear how these tips have worked for you in your life. Log in to Reply