Perfmon File Analysis Tools

Question

I have a bunch of perfmon files that have captured information over a period of time. Whats the best tool to crunch this information? Idealy I'd like to be able to see avg stats per hour for the object counters that have been monitored.

Orford

Answer 1

Perhaps look into using LogParser. It depends on how the info was logged (Perfmon doesn't lack flexibility)

If they're CSV you can even use the ODBC Text drivers and run queries against them!

(performance would be 'intriguing')

And here's the obligatory link to a CodingHorror article on the topic ;-)

Soho

Answer 2

From my experience, even just Excel makes a pretty good tool for quickly whipping up graphs of perfmon if you relog the data to CSV or TSV. You can just plot a rolling average & see the progression. Excel isn't fancy, but if you don't have more than 30-40 megs of data it can do a pretty quick job. I've found that Excel 2007 tends to get unstable when using tables & over 50 megs of data: at one point an 'undo' caused it to consume 100% cpu & 1.3 GB of RAM.

Addendum - relog isn't the best known tool but it is very useful. I don't know of any GUI front ends, so you just have to run it from the command line. The two most common cases I've used it for are

1. Removing unnecessary counters from logs that different sysadmin gave me, e.g. the entire process & memory objects.
2. Converting the binary perfmon logs to .csv or .tsv files.

Seleucia

Answer 3

This is a free tool provided on Codeplex, provides charting capabilities, and inbuilt thresholds for differnt server roles, which can also be modified. Generates HTML reports.

http://www.codeplex.com/PAL/Release/ProjectReleases.aspx?ReleaseId=21261

Publia

Make sure you use Version 2 of PAL, since it is significantly better than version 1. The graphs are prettier and data values are handled correctly. – Toboggan

Answer 4

Take a look at SmartMon (www.perfmonanalysis.com). It analyzes Perfmon data in CSV and SQL Server databases.

Petunia