Introducing the new Performance Monitor for Windows
Published Nov 04 2019 06:01 AM 116K Views
Microsoft

Written by Cosmos Darwin, Senior PM at Microsoft. Follow him on Twitter @cosmosdarwin.

 

As the administrator of Windows computers and servers, you deserve the best tools to understand how features, apps, and devices are working. When you need to troubleshoot why something is slow or broken, there’s no source of truth more trusty or versatile than Windows performance counters.

 

The classic user interface for perf counters, Performance Monitor or perfmon.exe, hasn’t changed much since it was added to Windows in 1993. (That’s right – over 25 years ago!) It’s difficult to learn and time-consuming to use. It could be way, way better.

 

Today, we’re beyond excited to introduce a reimagined Performance Monitor:

 

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The new Performance Monitor tool is available today in Preview as part of Windows Admin Center version 1910, which you can download here. It runs in your default browser, doesn’t depend on any other software or services, and works with all recent versions of Windows Server and Windows 10.

 

Modern design

The first thing you’ll notice is the modern look and feel: the app layout is less cluttered, the fonts and icons are crisp and clear, and the colors are vibrant. Just like Windows and your favorite apps, it’s available in light and dark theme:

 

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Modern usability
To get started, choose the Object, Instance, and Counter from the successive combobox controls at the top. There are 1,000s of counters out there, so if you already know which one(s) you want, save time by keyword searching the list:

 

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To help you choose if you don’t already know, details about each counter appear when you hover your cursor over its name:

 

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Once you’ve selected a counter, Performance Monitor suggests other counters that make sense to graph together based on their units – for example, Read Bytes/sec and Write Bytes/sec.

 

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Simply check or uncheck boxes to add or remove instances and counters from the graph:

 

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Graph types
The best way to visualize performance counters depends on what you’re doing, so the new Performance Monitor offers multiple graph types. Some are familiar, others are new, and yet more are in development.

 

Line graph

 

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Use the Line graph to view one or multiple counters over time. New data gets rendered once every second, from the right edge. The vertical axis is the counter value(s) and adjusts automatically. The horizontal axis is time. The default time domain is five minutes, which you can adjust in Settings.
To inspect the values at any point in time, hover over that point with your cursor. To more easily distinguish one line among others on the same graph, hover over its legend:

 

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Add multiple line graphs to one workspace to comfortably see many varied counters over time. The graphs update in sync and are linked by a shared vertical hairline that follows your cursor position:

 

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For users with color vision deficiency, you can select a higher-contrast color palette in Settings.

 

Report graph

 

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Use the Report to see unlimited instances and counters in one big table, where the columns are instances and the rows are counters – just like the original perfmon.exe. However, unlike perfmon.exe, full copy/paste is supported – in fact, you can copy the whole table into Microsoft Excel, or any Office application, and it just works.

 

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Because the report updates every one second with the latest values, you may find it helpful to pause:

 

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You can make the report’s font larger without distorting the rest of the user interface in Settings.

 

Min-max graph

 

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Use the new Min-max graph to compare instances of an object and look for imbalances or outliers. Each row is an instance. The columns on the left show the current value of the selected counter for that instance, as well as the minimum, average, and maximum observed values (since the time when the graph was added). You can sort the instances by any column – for example, you could sort Physical Disk instances by their maximum observed latency.

 

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On the right, the horizontal box-and-whisker plot shows the distribution of observed values for each instance. The leftmost whisker is the 0th percentile; the edges of the box represent the 25th and 75th percentiles, and the rightmost whisker is the 100th percentile. The middle line is the 50th percentile, also known as the median, or middle value. Values that fall far outside the interquartile range are excluded and shown as dots.

 

Workspaces

Once you’ve arranged the counters and graphs you find most helpful, you can save your Performance Monitor workspace to quickly get back to that layout again later. Saved workspaces are automatically available for every server you manage with Windows Admin Center.

 

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To share your workspace to other environments or with other people, you can download it as an easy-to-read JSON file that others can upload. The file contains workspace metadata, possibly including instance names, but does not include any actual data values.

 

Clusters and hyperconverged infrastructure

In addition to individual Windows computers and servers, Performance Monitor makes it easy to aggregate performance counters for Windows Server clusters, including hyperconverged infrastructure like Azure Stack HCI. Simply connect to the cluster in Windows Admin Center and select Performance Monitor from the Tools list.

 

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Every feature described above is available for Windows Server clusters, including all the graph types and the ability to save and share workspaces. The only difference is one additional combobox at the top to choose which cluster node(s) to include:

 

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What happens now?
If you’re as excited as we are about the new Performance Monitor, you can try it right now! It’s available in Preview as part of Windows Admin Center version 1910, which you can download here. It works with Windows Server 2016, Windows Server 2019, and Insider Preview. It works with Windows 10 PCs too, although we’re exploring more convenient ways to distribute Performance Monitor for those customers.

 

We’re deeply happy to be making these core parts of Windows better for IT – finally! This first Preview is just the start: we know there’s more to do, and we could really use your input. Please consider taking our short survey: aka.ms/perfmon-feedback

 

Thank you for choosing Windows!

 

<3
The Windows Admin Center Team

13 Comments
Brass Contributor

'Do you guys not have web browsers?'

Steel Contributor

This looks really nice. But I would prefer if this was a regular app builtin to Windows 10 and Windows Server. Windows Admin Center is not relevant for us. I probably just keep using perfmon.exe just because I don't have to install and maintain it.

 

Also in your survey you ask if I use Microsoft Message Analyzer. I find that odd, when you deprecated MMA about a month ago. Shouldn't you ask that kind of question before depreacting the software?

Copper Contributor

Like the look and feel so far. 

 

Would be nice if the area for live counters would stack a littley tighter to allow easier comparison. 

 

Looking forward to when we can import blgs. 

Copper Contributor

Any plan of being able to record the information and store them locally not using Log Analytics?

Or being able to see performance counters from more servers in one place? 

Copper Contributor
OK, it is 2020 now, I have version 1910 installed, and I surely do't see any such tool in the UI, nor any relevant add-on it the list. Should I use a special add-on feed? This is what is use now for the feeds: https://aka.ms/sme-extension-feed Help?
Copper Contributor
Oh, cancel that! I found it. It looks more shiny if you actually set it up to display something... :D
Copper Contributor
A way to re-order those panes (move them up and down, etc) would be nice. Also, a way to hide the drop downs for them would help preserve space (make them go in "locked" and "edit" modes). Also, you could (and maybe should) make them able to span less than 100% of the width of the page, so that one can view many of them at once. I find myself having to scroll a lot to find what I need (since I like to stack a lot of performance counters to get a better overview). Also, the ability to attach some of those counters in the "Overview" tab would be also great. Overall, this is a very impressive tool people! :) I really love it! One question: Can the addition of those counters affect performance some times? And a suggestion: It would be great if you also improved the "Files" tab to handle the user input better (easier file selection, add move/copy/drag&drop options, maybe easier upload & download, etc). This area has a lot of potential... This is all awesome!

Looks very well designed and informative 

Copper Contributor

@Cosmos Darwin Nice article!  We started to use Workspaces as you wrote:

Saved workspaces are automatically available for every server you manage with Windows Admin Center.

However, we have never successfully shared any saved workspace created on a server for other servers.  It is only available for the server which is saved on. Is there any tip?  Our WAC is Build 1.2.1910.31005.

Copper Contributor

I think I misunderstood the way to share workspaces.  I expected workspaces would be automatically shared by WAC, but seems not - users need to manually download an available workspace from a server and upload it to another server.

Copper Contributor

I posted this in Uservoice too, but I've found that feature parity may not be there quite yet (vs. MMC-base Perfmon).  A few things I've run into:

1. Seems like some objects are missing (where is "SMB Client Shares"?)

2. I'd expect to be able to add counters with the same unit to the same line graph panel.  However in Physical Disk when I attempt to add both disk sec/read and disk sec/write to the same panel the line graph shifts to a report format.

3. It seems like the workspace export has limited portability.  The JSON file very specifically defines what's in-scope for the workspace.  If I select all instances and the system where I'm defining the workspace has drives C and E the JSON file shows those instances.  What happens if/when I try to import that into a system with drives C and S?

 

Am I just missing something/somethings?  Is there a list that defines where feature parity doesn't exist?  TIA!

Copper Contributor

It's great thank you @Cosmos Darwin 

Copper Contributor

Overall I like the idea, but it seems like there are things not working. Focus being purely on the Performance monitor.

A BIG BIG annoyance is the placement of the tooltips. Try and pick a Object, Instance and then say you wan't to pick counter 1-5, that tooltip is constantly in the way. I can't understand how  the developer of that part was not like "This won't work", I would have been.

Beyond that I can't seem to get data out of any of the ASP.NET counters. Where I can do so in the original perfmon, so that sadly makes it useless for me. :( 

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