As an administrator you are always looking for new tools to make your life easier. One of these tools is the Performance Analysis of Logs (PAL).  The best part of this tool is that its free and can be downloaded from codeplex.  I have included the link at the bottom of the article.  The main person behind the project is Clint Huffman who joined Microsoft back in 1999.  While troubleshooting problems for the premier performance team he notcied that most problems could be found using perfmon.  The problem with perfmon is that you really have to know what you are looking for and have the ability to weed out everything that does not matter.  That is where the PAL tool comes into play.  Instead of making an art out of reading perfmon captures it make it more like a science.  You can run your perfmon captures through this tool and it will point out where potential bottlenecks might exist.  Some of the products you can troubleshoot using this tool are IIS, MOSS, SQL Server, Exchange Server, and Active Directory.  The list is not limited to the products listed but they are the most common.  I urge to head on over to the codeplex site to download the tool.  Clint was also recently on RunAs Radio.  If you get a chance stop over and listen to the podcast.

PAL Tool On Codeplex:
http://www.codeplex.com/PAL

Clint Huffman’s Blog:
http://blogs.technet.com/clint_huffman/

RunAS Radio Podcast Link:
http://www.runasradio.com/default.aspx?showNum=82

Administrators usually find some need in their daily activities to try and stress test a server to see how much load it can handle.  It can also assist with performance testing by seeing how a applications reacts on servers that are at 100 percent utilization.

Iometer has been around since 1998 and we developed by Intel.  The program went doormat for a long period of time and was given to the open source community in 2001.  It was relaunched in 2003 and is developed by a international group of individuals.

Iometer is supported on several different platforms including Linux, Netware, Mac OS X, Solaris, and Windows.  There are several different parameters you can enter in order to produce a load.  You can also set the run time, ramp up time, and the number of workers used to generate the load.

Project Web Site
http://www.iometer.org/

Project Screenshots
http://www.iometer.org/doc/screenshots.html