One of the big things we struggle with as an administrator is keeping a pulse on what our servers are doing. Perfmon can be pretty overwhelming if you don’t know what you need to concentrate on. Microsoft has designed a class to help you called Vital Signs. This class is currently only for customers with Premier service contracts. So if you are not one of those customers you will have to wait. If you do happen to have the opportunity to take the class I recommend it. In the meantime there has been a great article that has been put out on TechNet that gives you an overview of what you should be watching. Not only does this article tell you what to watch but it also gives you an idea of what the thresholds should be. It also goes into detail on when you should measure it and also how to tweak Perfmon so your graphs are readable in XP\Server 2003. Stop over and check the article out and let me know what you think.
TechNet Article – Taking Your Server’s Pulse
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/magazine/2008.08.pulse.aspx?pr=blog
