Oct 212009
 

Quest Software has allot of great products on the market.  As a windows administrator we are always looking for great tools to help us troubleshoot problems quickly.  The FREE tool called spotlight on windows does a great job at finding the bottleneck on servers.  No matter what your experience level you have, this tool will help you.  The graphical interface gives you a quick snapshot of what the server is currently doing.  Some of the things it shows is network utilization, cpu utilization, physical memory utilization, and disk capacity.  If there is an issue the area will turn either orange or red depending on how bad the problem is.   Another nice feature is you can drill down into each individual area and get more information.  Each drill down area provides and explanation of exactly what you are looking at.  I do have to warn you that this tool can become addictive because of all the information it can provide in a quick snapshot.  You can download the program directly from the quest software site.  I strongly urge you to at least download and try it out.  I think you will learn quickly that this tool can make you look like genius.

Quest Software – Spotlight On Windows
http://www.quest.com/spotlight-on-windows/

Oct 032009
 

Pingtest.net was just launched to help you determine the quality of your broadband internet connection.  This tool can be used by everybody as the site breaks your test results down for you.  It assigns the letter A-F for your test results.  There is also a grade of N/A if the site can’t determine your connection rating.  The test is composed of packet loss, ping times, and line jitter.  So follow the link below and check out what your connection is graded at.  My personal connection was rated at a C which is what I expected as my ISP does not have the greatest reputation in the world.

Pingtest.net
http://www.pingtest.net/index.php

Pingtest.net Detailed Info
http://www.pingtest.net/learn.php

Sep 252009
 

Jimmy May has a great post over on his website that goes along with my last post about performance counters.  Jimmy works allot with SQL performance but also included some of the Vital Signs information is his spreadsheet.  Below is the link for the post which as that spreadsheet attached to it.  I would get over and download and keep it tucked away on your desktop so you can look like a genius.

Jimmy May’s Performance Post – Spreadsheet Attached In Post
http://blogs.msdn.com/jimmymay/archive/2008/10/15/perfmon-objects-counters-thresholds-utilities-for-sql-server.aspx