Introduction

This document specifies how to define Performance Counters for collection by the Performance Monitoring Agent (PMA) in Windows, and the pre-defined performance counters that exist in the Apica LoadTest database.

The table shows the Counter ID (CID) and the Name (string) which will be shown when picking counters to show in the loadtest result.

Some of the counters apply to Windows in general or IIS or SQL Server specifically, others refer to Linux systems.

Windows - Configure performance counters

The pmcConfig file describes the performance counters that will be collected by the agent.
There are two templates available, to copy the configuration

One for a typical IIS server
One for a typical SQL server

pmcConfig File Example:

Instruct the agent to collect the performance counter '% Processor Time' in the performance object 'Processor', and we want to collect statistics for all processors so we set the instance to '_Total'. The XML would look like this:
<performanceCounter>
<pmc name="cid">1</pmc>
<pmc name="CategoryName">Processor</pmc>
<pmc name="CounterName">% Processor Time</pmc>
<pmc name="InstanceName">_Total</pmc>
</performanceCounter>

Manually getting Counter Data in Windows


The easiest way to find additional Performance Counters is to open perfmon.exe on the local machine and add a new counter.
You will be presented with a list of Categories like ‘Processor’ or ‘Processor Information’ and within these categories, you will find different performance counters like ‘% User Time’ or ‘% Processor Time’. In this case below we see ‘%User Time’ and we want to add all instances of this counter under the Performance Object, 'Processor'
Once you have added the counter to perfmon, the selected counters will be displayed at the bottom of the window.
The list of selected counters contains the information that needs to be supplied to the agent in the pmcConfig file. Object = CategoryName, Counter = CounterName, Instance = InstanceName Performance objects (other than the default counters, and those included in the templates) will not be stored unless the counter ID has already been defined in the database, if the agent connects to an on-premise controller, see the controller manual for further details. If the agent connects to the SAAS controller (ltagcontroller.apicasystem.com) please contact support@apica.io and make sure to include the names of the performance objects that you wish to add.

Pre-defined counters in the ALT DB

The columns show which counters/definitions are included in the templates. Note that the "default" counters (Window/Linux) are always reported by the agent, even without templates.

CID	Name in DB	PMA default Windows	IIS Server Template	SQL Server Template	PMA default Linux

CID	Name in DB	PMA default Windows	IIS Server Template	SQL Server Template	PMA default Linux
1	CPU Usage %	✓	✓	✓	✓
2	Physical Memory Used (MB)				✓
3	Mbit/s Received (RX)	✓			✓
4	Mbit/s Transmitted (TX)	✓			✓
5	MB/s Read	✓			✓
6	MB/s Written	✓			✓
7	MYSQL Threads Running
8	MySQL Threads Connected
9	MySQL Queries
10	MySQL Open Tables
11	MySQL Table Locks Waited
12	MySQL Slow Queries
15	Load Avg (1 Min)				✓
16	Load Avg (5 min)				✓
17	Load Avg (15 Min)				✓
18	Pages swapped into memory				✓
19	Pages swapped out of memory				✓
20	IO Wait %				✓
21	Memory Cache Used (MB)				✓
22	Running Processes				✓
23	Physical Memory Available		✓	✓	✓
24	Physical Disk: Avg Disk Queue Length		✓	✓
25	System: Threads		✓	✓
26	System: Processor Queue Length		✓	✓
27	Memory: Pages/sec		✓	✓
28	Physical Disk: % Disk Time		✓	✓
29	TIME_WAIT Connections
30	Current Anonymous Users
31	Current Connections
32	Connections To Mock
33	Memory Used %
34	EJABBERD Connected Users
35	EJABBERD Outgoing s2s Con
36	EJABBERD Incoming s2s Con
37	REDIS: Ops per second
38	IOSTAT A_WAIT
42	Threads
43	System: Processor Queue Length
44	ESTABLISHED Connections
45	Web Service - Current Connections		✓
46	Requests Current		✓
47	Requests/Sec		✓
48	% Time in GC		✓
49	Apache Processes
50	Apache Connections
51	Stingray: Current Connections
52	Open Files
53	Application Running		✓
54	Requests Disconnected		✓
55	Requests Queued		✓
56	Requests Rejected		✓
57	State Server Sessions Active		✓
58	Worker Process Restarts		✓
59	Worker Process Running		✓
60	Cache Total Entries		✓
61	Cache Total Hit Ratio		✓
62	Cache Total Turnover Rate		✓
63	Errors Total/Sec		✓
64	Output Cache Entries		✓
65	Output Cache Hit Ratio		✓
66	Output Cache Turnover Rate		✓
67	Sessions Active		✓
68	Transactions Pending		✓
69	Transactions/Sec		✓
70	SQL Server: Batch Requests/sec			✓
71	SQL Server: Buffer cache hit ratio			✓
72	SQL Server: Number of Deadlocks/sec			✓
73	SQL Server: Full Scans/sec			✓
74	SQL Server: Table Lock Escalations/sec			✓
75	SQL Server: Repl. Trans. Rate			✓
76	SQLServer: Buffer Manager Page life expectancy
77	SQLServer: SQL Statistics SQL Compilations/sec
78	SQLServer: SQL Statistics SQL Re-Compilations/sec
79	SQLServer: Cursor Manager by Type Cursor Requests/sec
80	service user opened files
81	established connections
82	current threads
83	webserver running processes
84	webserver status busy workers
85	webserver status idle workers
86	webserver status request x second
87	CPU Steal %
90	ruleFirings-FeatureEventRule
91	ruleFirings-LASEFeatureAlertRule
92	ruleFirings-SaveWeatherDataEvent
93	ruleFirings-WeatherEventRule
94	ruleFirings-TimeTickRule
95	smsEmailWindPrecipNotifications-SMTPChannel
96	smsEmailWindPrecipNotifications-SMSChannel
97	smsEmailWindPrecipNotifications-LASEChannel
98	smsEmailLightningNotifications-SMTPChannel
99	smsEmailLightningNotifications-SMSChannel
100	smsEmailLightningNotifications-LASEChannel
101	laseLightningNotifications-SMTPChannel
102	laseLightningNotifications-SMSChannel
103	laseLightningNotifications-LASEChannel
104	lightningEvents
105	windMETAREvents
106	windTAFEvents
107	precipMETAREvents
108	precipTAFEvents
109	AverageNumberTasksPerJob
110	NumberOfTasksSchedulePerSecond
111	NumberOfTasksProcessedPerSecond
112	InMemoryJobs

Apica LoadTest Documentation

Apica PMA Counters Summary

Introduction

Windows - Configure performance counters

pmcConfig File Example:

Manually getting Counter Data in Windows

Pre-defined counters in the ALT DB