It had to happen sooner or later: Your Active Directory (AD) performance just went to heck for no obvious reason. Last week, everything was humming along just fine, but this week, you've received half a dozen complaints about lethargic logons, failed Microsoft Exchange Server address book lookups, and slow application startups. Running Performance Monitor on each of your domain controllers (DCs) shows that the CPU utilization on one of your DCs is pegged at 100 percent much of the time. But nothing has changed, and everything else seems to be running fine. Now what do you do?
That's where Windows Server 2003 Performance Advisor (SPA) comes in. SPA is a nifty but largely unknown performance analysis utility that Microsoft made available more than two years ago. It automates the collection of configuration, Event Tracing for Windows (ETW), and performance counter data from one or more servers, crunches the resulting mountain of data, and produces easy-to-read performance reports with alerts and recommendations as to how to fix problems. SPA ships with predefined data collectors and performance rules for generic file servers, AD DCs, DNS servers, and servers running Microsoft Internet Information Services (IIS).
Step 1: Download and Install SPA
SPA doesn't ship with the Windows image; you have to download it from http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=09115420-8c9d-46b9-a9a5-9bffcd237da2. Make sure you download the most recent version and not the earlier Server Performance Advisor 1.0. The installer file is spa_v2_msi.
Running SPA on a busy server, such as a DC, can generate a lot of data. Be sure you have several gigabytes of free disk space for the data storage folder. Ideally, you should place the data storage folder on its own spindle to minimize the performance impact of running SPA.
Installing SPA is easy on 32-bit Windows. Run the Windows Installer package you downloaded; accept the End-User License Agreement (EULA); accept the defaults for the installation, data storage,-and reports folders; and you're good to go.
Installing SPA on 64-bit versions of Windows is a little more involved. SPA requires the Microsoft .NET Framework version 1.1, but that version isn't available for 64-bit platforms. However, you can use the 32-bit version of the .NET Framework on your 64-bit server, and SPA will work fine. Just do the following: Download and install the .NET Framework version 1.1 redistributable package, which is available at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?FamilyID=262d25e3-f589-4842-8157-034d1e7cf3a3&displaylang=en.
Next, download and install .NET Framework Service Pack 1 (SP1) for Windows Server 2003. You'll find it at http://www.microsoft.com/downloads/details.aspx?familyid=AE7EDEF7-2CB7-4864-8623-A1038563DF23&displaylang=en. Finally, install SPA.
In addition to copying the executables and creating the SPA directories, the installer creates several scheduled tasks to collect performance data. You can see these tasks by clicking the Schedule Tasks icon in the Control Panel. The tasks that SPA creates are dormant—that is, they're created but don't have a scheduled run time. When you use the SPA client to start a collection, the client simply schedules the task to run. It's an unusual design, but simpler than creating a Windows service and just as effective.
Step 2: Run SPA
You can launch the SPA client by clicking Start, All Programs, Server Performance Advisor. The SPA client presents a somewhat inscrutable UI at startup, initially hiding the navigation hierarchy. To expose the hierarchy, select Scope Tree from the View menu or click the document icon in the gray border on the left side of the window.
The SPA client uses the conventional Microsoft Management Console (MMC) layout, displaying the navigation hierarchy in the left pane and data in the right pane. The Trace Providers and Performance Counters nodes are useful for composing new kinds of SPA collections. But the Data Collectors and Reports node is where the interesting stuff lies.
SPA gathers performance data from a server using a set of data collectors. There are four types of data collectors: performance counter collectors, registry setting collectors, trace collectors, and kernel trace collectors. SPA organizes data collectors into data collector groups, each of which targets performance data for a particular subsystem, such as IIS or AD.
SPA ships with about 90 predefined collector groups. The installation process detects what role or roles your server is configured for and adds one or more of the following eight data collector groups depending on those roles:
- Active Directory
- Active Directory/Application Mode (ADAM)
- DNS Server
- DNS Server Extended
- File
- IIS
- Print Spooler
- System Overview
SPA enables the appropriate collector groups at installation and displays them under the Data Collectors and Reports node in the Scope Tree. So, for instance, when you install SPA on a DC, the Active Directory collector group will be displayed. You can enable or disable individual collector groups from the SPA client by clicking File, Add/Repair Data Collector Groups, Server Roles.
SPA also ships with specialized collector groups that you can use and modify to suit your needs, You can enable these collector groups by clicking File, Add/Repair Data Collector Groups and selecting a collector group from the menu.
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