Monitoring performance counters
Some components in UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer expose properties that can be monitored using Microsoft Performance Monitor, and add Performance objects named Interview Engine, Interview Web, and Interview Project to the Monitor (that allows you to access those properties). This means you can monitor information about the server while it is running. Also, by using Performance Monitor, you can create alerts when certain events happen. For example, you can create an alert that sends the system broadcast “UNICOM Intelligence Interviewer: Very High Start Volume” when the Starts per Second counter exceeds 30: that is, when there are more than 30 requests per second to start interviews.
For information on the counters exposed by the components, see:
Which performance counters should be monitored?
It is usually sufficient to monitor the following performance counters:
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Performance object
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Counter
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Instances
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Processor
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% Processor Time
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_Total
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Process
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ID
% Processor Time
Working Set
Virtual Bytes (the virtual address space)
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Interview Engine and Interview Web (Interview and Web tier servers)
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Active Threads (the number of active thread which can indicate “stuck” interviews)
Current Queued Requests
Average Response Time
Current Interviews (the number of interviews currently running)
Percent Loaded (the current value of PercentLoaded which is used for load balancing)
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_Total
Specific URL path for each engine or Web service.
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The Windows operating system can sometimes disable the performance counters. The counters can be enabled by changing the required registry values and restarting the server. For more information, see the Microsoft article “Disable Performance Counters”:
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc784382%28WS.10%29.aspx
Keeping the counters accurate
When restarting IIS, use the /timeout option to ensure that running interviews are shut down cleanly. If this is not done, the counters can become inaccurate. See
Resetting IIS and the services for more information.
Which IIS process is running the Web and Interview tiers
In IIS 7, IIS applications run in the w3wp process. You can use the appcmd command to determine which processes are running the Web and Interview tiers. For example, you can run the following command from the Windows command prompt:
%SystemRoot%\System32\inetsrv\appcmd list wp
You can then match the Process ID (PID) for the application pool with the ID for each w3wp process being monitored.
Using PerfMon to monitor counters
You can run the Performance Monitor (perfmon) from any computer, not just an interviewing server.
1 From Control Panel select Administrative Tools Performance.
This opens the Performance window.
2 Click New Counter Set (the leftmost icon above the graph).
This clears the graph frame and the list of counters below it.
3 Click Add (the plus sign).
This displays the Add Counters dialog.
4 In the computer list, select the computer whose counters you want to monitor.
5 In Performance object, select the object whose counters you want to see. Typically this will be Interview Engine or Interview Web.
6 Click Select counters from list and then choose the counters from the list using standard Windows techniques. Click Add to add them to frame at the foot of the main window.
7 Click either All instances to see counters for all instances of the chosen object, or Select instances from list and choose the instances you want to monitor.
8 If necessary, repeat these steps to add counters for other objects to the set.
9 Click Close.
If you want to view counters in histogram form rather than a line graph, click the Histogram icon above the graph.
See
See also