Microsoft Sharepoint Products and Technologies Resource Kit eBook

Chapter 10: Performance Monitoring in Microsoft Office SharePoint Portal Server 2003 239
SharePoint Portal Server Counters
Each type of server—index, search, and front-end Web—has performance counters
specific to its function in the server farm. This section lists the counters that should be
analyzed for each server type to determine how and when to scale the server farm.
Front-End Web Servers—Large Server Farm
Analyze the counters in Table 10-2 to determine when to add a new dedicated
front-end Web server to a large server farm. When the counters continuously
approach or exceed any of the thresholds in Table 10-2, you should consider adding
another dedicated front-end Web server to the server farm. However, you
should also check the general counters in Table 10-1 to better understand the
server’s performance.
Table 10-2 Performance Counters for Dedicated Front-End Web Servers
Object Counter Threshold Description
Processor Percent processor
time_total
ASP.NET
applications
Requests per
second_total
Web service Get requests per
second_total, individual
portal, or
IIS Virtual root
80 to 85 percent averaged
over three intervals.
Through ongoing monitoring,
trends begin to emerge that
equate requests per second
with CPU consumption.
Through ongoing monitoring,
trends begin to emerge that
equate get requests per second
with CPU consumption.
The total percentage of processor
usage for a server.
The number of requests executed
per second; this roughly equates
to the number of HTTP pages per
second.
Generally speaking, this is the rate
at which clients are requesting
information from the front-end
Web servers.
Leading Indicators for Front-End Web Servers
The counter percent processor time is the leading indicator of front-end Web
server performance. You should sample percent processor time every 15 minutes; if
it exceeds the indicated threshold on average, consider adding an additional frontend
Web server. If your customer has very high performance expectations, you
might need to establish a lower average threshold.
The value that requests per second reaches while percent processor time is at
the threshold indicates the approximate maximum throughput for the server. Adding
a front-end Web server should add this amount of capacity to the server farm.
Impact of Windows SharePoint Services Sites
Be sure to take into consideration the impact of extensive front-end traffic to
Microsoft Windows SharePoint Services sites. If some of your Windows SharePoint
Services sites are generating significant front-end traffic, you might want to scale out
one or more of those sites to a separate server farm, as discussed in the “Dedicated
Windows SharePoint Services Server Farm” section later in this chapter.