Once all the programs described in the previous post are installed we can start to familiarize with the system.

One question arises: what data to capture? This depends on the role of the server where the collecting agent is installed.

For an application server we can collect some basic data:

• we can use Telegraf inputs cpu, disk e mem
• some useful Performance Counters to collect are:
  • Processor : “% Idle Time”, “% Interrupt Time”, “% Privileged Time”, “% User Time”, “% Processor Time” (only _Total)
  • Network Interface: “Bytes Received/sec”, “Bytes Sent/sec”, “Bytes Total/sec” (all istances except _Total)
  • LogicalDisk : “Disk Bytes/sec”, “Disk Read Bytes/sec”, “Disk Write Bytes/sec” (all istances except _Total)

If the server hosts web applications you can add these Performance Counters:

• ASP.NET : “Requests Queued”
• ASP.NET Apps v4.0.30319 : “Requests/sec”, “Sessions active”
• Web Service: “Connection Attempts/sec”, “Current Connections”

If you are using MSMQ:

• MSMQ Queue : “Messages in Queue” (you can read them all or specify individual queues),
• MSMQ Service : “Total bytes in all queues” (this is important as MSMQ by default has a 1GB limit for messages saved and will refuse new messages when that limit is reached)