PerfmonPro FAQ

The Microsoft Windows built-in System Monitor provides a good starting point for users who want to monitor the performance counters on their computers. However, the Windows built-in System Monitor has limitations that precluded it from being used as an enterprise monitoring tool. PerfmonPro bridges the gap of the limitations of System Monitor. The table below shows a few of the advantages of PerfmonPro over System Monitor.

	Windows System Monitor	PerfmonPro
Error handling	Limited error handling mechanisms.	Offers advanced error handling mechanisms suitable for reliable, large scale monitoring. Error handling mechanisms include sending email alerts, SNMP traps, system tray pop-up, error logging to filesystem, etc. Advanced error handling also includes error throttling which prevents too many errors from being reported within a short period of time.
Granularity of controlling monitoring parameters	Limited level of control in setting monitoring parameters.	Offers very fine degree of control in configuring monitoring parameters, including ability to set different parameters for different period of time, different error handling mechanism for different period of time.
Avoiding flapping* error	No mechanism is available to avoid errors caused by flapping of performance counter values.	Offers an advanced mechanism to avoid errors or false alarms caused by flapping of performance counter values.

*flapping : Flapping occurs when a performance counter alternates between the "normal" state and the "error" state within a short period of time. The errors generated during a flapping condition are usually caused by short and intermittent bursts of activities on the computer and they are usually false alarms.

PerfmonPro strikes a balance between functionality and ease-of-use. Many of the software that perform similar functions as PerfmonPro either require you to setup a lot of supporting infrastructure before you can use the software or need to be maintained by a team of IT experts. In contrast, PerfmonPro is easy to install and use, but yet offers many functionalities. A computer user with a fair bit of knowledge in computers can quickly reap the benefits that PerfmonPro has to offer.

PerfmonPro has been thoroughly tested on and is fully compatible with all editions of 64-bit and 32-bit Microsoft Windows operating systems.

The 64-bit version of PerfmonPro runs natively on all 64-bit editions of Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows 2003 and Windows XP.

The 32-bit version of PerfmonPro are fully compatible with all 32-bit editions of Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000.

Like a car or a piano that needs to be tuned regularly to bring it back to its top performance condition, the performance of your computers degrades over time from the day-to-day use and performance monitoring enables you to identify the problem areas.

Of course, your car, piano, or computer will continue to work even without regular tuning but you will end up spending more time and effort compensating for its inefficiency — time and effort that could be better utilised.

For companies that rely on mission critical IT services, the performance of the computers and applications are all the more critical to the success of the business. Proactive performance monitoring and tuning of computer resources have become one of the main considerations when implementing an IT solution that is a success not only at its launch but also in the long run.

PerfmonPro can monitor all performance counters that are available in Microsoft Windows Server 2008, Windows Vista, Windows Server 2003, Windows XP, Windows 2000, and the performance counters available in Microsoft server products such as Exchange Server, SQL Server, BizTalk Server, Commerce Server, etc. There are thousands of performance counters available in Microsoft products. For a comprehensive list of the performance counters that can be monitored by PerfmonPro, refer to the document Performance Counters for Microsoft Products

PerfmonPro has 2 types of features – Standard and Premium. Standard features can be used free of charge. Premium features have an evaluation period of 30 days and when the evaluation period expires, customers are required to purchase licenses to activate the premium features if they want to continue to use the premium features.

In short, you can use PerfmonPro free of charge if you only use the standard features of PerfmonPro. You need to purchase licenses for premium features if you want to use the premium features of PerfmonPro.

NOTE: Kiong Software has special licensing cost for charity organizations and not-for-profit organizations. Please contact we.care@kiongsoftware.com for further details on these special licensing costs.

The "Monitor resources on remote computers" feature allows an instance of PerfmonPro to monitor the resources on multiple remote computers. The remote computers being monitored do not need to have PerfmonPro installed on them. Using a single instance of PerfmonPro to monitor resources in an IT environment greatly reduces the administrative tasks required to manage the configuration of PerfmonPro. Customers with a medium-to-large IT environment will benefit from the cost saving in using the "Monitor resources on remote computers" feature.

You can read more about PerfmonPro in the user guide.

Accurate performance monitoring is more art than science. What is considered acceptable performance for one computer may not be acceptable for another computer. Fortunately, there are many good and reliable resources available to help you to develop the art of performance monitoring. Below is a list of some reliable resources: The Microsoft TechNet has very good technical resources for all Microsoft products. The resources cover how to monitor performance of Microsoft products, among other topics.
Additional resources that cover how to monitor the performance of Microsoft products are:

Windows Operating System	"Microsoft Windows Server 2003 Performance Guide". Mark Friedman. Microsoft Press. "Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Operations Guide", Part 2 Performance Monitoring. Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-57231-805-8 "Windows 2000 Professional Resource Kit". Part 6 Performance Monitoring. Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-57231-808-2
Internet Information Services	"Microsoft Internet Information Services 5.0 Resource Guide". Chapter 5 Monitoring and Tuning Your Server. Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-57231-805-8
Active Directory	"Microsoft Windows 2000 Server Distributed Systems Guide". Chapter 8 Monitoring Performance in Active Directory. Microsoft Press. ISBN 1-57231-805-8
Microsoft SQL Server	"Microsoft SQL Server 2005 Unleashed", Part V SQL Server Performance and Optimization. Ray Rankins, Paul Bertucci, Chris Gallelli, Alex T. Silverstein. SAMS Publishing. ISBN 0672328240 "Beginning SQL Server 2005 Administration", Chapter 10 Monitoring SQL Server for Performance. Dan Wood, Chris Leiter, Paul Turley. Wrox. ISBN 0470047046 "SQL Server 2000 Fast Answers for DBAs and Developers", Chapter 17 Performance Tuning. Joseph Sack. Curlingstone Publishing Ltd. ISBN 1-904347-09-6
Exchange Server	"Mastering Microsoft Exchange Server 2007", Chapter 21 Logging, Auditing, Monitoring. Barry Gerber, Jim McBee. Sybex. ISBN 0470042893 "Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 Administrator's Companion", Chapter 17 Tuning Exchange Server 2007 Performance. Walter Glenn, Scott Lowe, Joshua Maher. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0735623503
BizTalk Server	"Pro BizTalk 2006 (Pro)", Chapter 11. George Dunphy, Ahmed Metwally. Apress. ISBN 1590596994 "Professional BizTalk Server 2006". Chapters 9 and 10. Darren Jefford, Kevin B. Smith, Ewan Fairweather. Wrox. ISBN 0470046422
SharePoint Server	"Microsoft Office SharePoint Server 2007 Administrator's Companion", Chapter 13 Performance Monitoring and Microsoft Operations Manager 2005. Bill English. Microsoft Press. ISBN 0735622825

And of course, you can always contact us at Kiong Software to assist you.

The privilege level required is dependent of the tasks you want to perform.

User privilege required to install/uninstall PerfmonPro:
You need to run the install or uninstall program with an account with administrator privilege. You can either login using an account with administrator privilege or use the "run as" option to execute the install or uninstall program under an account with administrator privilege.

User privilege to manage PerfmonPro service:
You need to have administrator privilege to control or change the parameters of the PerfmonPro service.

User privilege to manage PerfmonPro licenses:
You need to have administrator privilege to manage PerfmonPro licenses. You can either login using an account with administrator privilege or use the "run as" option to start the PerfmonPro Configuration Tool program.

User privilege to change PerfmonPro configuration file:
You need to have administrator privilege to make changes to PerfmonPro's configuration file. You can either login using an account with administrator privilege or use the "run as" option to start the PerfmonPro Configuration Tool program. You do not need to have administrator privilege to view the configuration.

NOTE: Due to the virtualization feature in Windows Vista, it may appear that you are able to modify the PerfmonPro configuration even if you did not perform the tasks under administrator privilege but the changes you make under this circumstance will not be detected by PerfmonPro because the changes are save in your virtual folder instead of the actual location of the configuration file. To avoid confusions, remember to start PerfmonPro Configuration Tool with administrator privilege if you want to make changes to the configuration file.

PerfmonPro writes information to a log file. You can often find a lot of useful information on what PerfmonPro is doing by looking at the log file. The location of the log file is different on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 and Windows Vista than on the versions of Windows operating system earlier than Windows Vista. On Windows Vista, the log file is typically located in the folder "C:\Users\All Users\Kiong Software\PerfmonPro\log". On Windows Server 2003, Windows XP and Windows 2000, the log file is typically located in the folder "C:\Documents and Settings\All Users\Application Data\Kiong Software\PerfmonPro\log".

No. PerfmonPro automatically and immediately detects any changes in the configuration file. Changes made to the configuration file while the PerfmonPro service is running are automatically put into effect.

Yes. You need to restart the PerfmonPro service after you have added or removed licenses in PerfmonPro for those changes to take effect.

First, check whether you have checked the "Enable" checkboxes of the Performance Counter and the Active Periods.

Second, check whether you have mistyped the Object, Counter, and/or Instance names when you configure the performance counter. Those names are case sensitive. The easiest way to avoid typographical errors when configuring the performance counter is to select it from the Performance Counter selection dialog box.

Third, check whether any of the active periods of the performance counter is in effect. PerfmonPro monitors the performance counter according to the active periods you configured for the resource.

You may need to increase the frequency to which PerfmonPro monitors that performance counter. For example, if you configured PerfmonPro to monitor a performance counter every 30 minutes, PerfmonPro will check the performance counter and then wait 30 minutes before it checks the counter again. If the exception condition occurred when PerfmonPro is in the wait state in between successive checks, then the exception condition will not be detected by PerfmonPro. To reduce the chances of PermonPro not detecting exceptions, you can configure PerfmonPro to check the performance counter more frequently, for example, every 5 minutes. The highest frequency that PerfmonPro can monitor a performance counter is every 1 second.

When you bought the license, you would have specified the quantity of the license. The following example explains how you can use the licenses.

If you bought a quantity of 5 licenses for a premium feature, you can install and activate the license on a maximum of 5 different computers at any one time. If you have activated all the licenses and you want to install and activate the license on a new computer, you can uninstall the license from an existing computer and install it on the new computer. You can transfer the license between computers but at any point in time, only a maximum of 5 computers will have the license installed.

If you need to uninstall PerfmonPro from a computer, you should first uninstall all activated premium licenses so that you can reuse the license in the future.

PerfmonPro takes advantage of the latest innovations in Java and depends on JRE 6. The PerfmonPro installation wizard will install the bundled JRE 6 if it detects that the computer does not already have JRE 6. However, the installation wizard will install the bundled JRE 6 in such a way that it does not interfere with any existing JRE already present on the computer. The installation wizard will install the bundled JRE 6 in a subdirectory under the PerfmonPro installation path and that instance of JRE 6 will only be used by PerfmonPro. Other Java applications on the computer will continue to use the existing JRE on the computer.

The error means PerfmonPro Configuration Tool cannot find a suitable JRE 6 on your computer. PerfmonPro Configuration Tool searches for a suitable JRE 6 in the following order:

- in the directory <PerfmonPro install path>\jre
- JRE defined in Windows registry
- JRE defined in the environment variable JAVA_HOME
- JRE defined in the environment variable JDK_HOME

The most common cause of this error is the JRE 6 has been uninstalled from the computer.

This problem can usually be resolved by performing one of the following steps:

- Install a version of Sun JRE version 6 (free download from http://java.sun.com/downloads/) on your computer, or
- If you are not using Sun Microsystems JRE 6, set the JAVA_HOME environment variable to the path of the JRE you are using.

We guard our customer's confidential information jealously. We use a SSL certificate issued by GeoTrust to protect your confidential information when you placed an order on our online store. In addition, great care is taken to protect your confidential information from the point it leaves your computer to the point where it is being stored for record keeping purpose. The diagram below shows that from the time the confidential information leaves your computer, it is being protected from unauthorized access not only while in transit but also while in storage. Because your confidential information is encrypted, even in the unlikely event that this information is stolen, what the perpetrators will get is meaningless data.