Built-in Windows monitoring tools

- [Instructor] There are many different built-in monitoring tools into Windows Server and one of my favorites is if we go under Tools to go to the Performance Monitor. Performance Monitor is going to give us a live up-to-date type of information about a whole bunch of different counters. Counters are data collectors from various different pieces of hardware, as well as software, on our computer. So by default you can see it's going to show us processor time. And this is similar if you were to go into Task Manager and look at the CPU, what it's currently doing. So I'm going to go up to the plus. You can see I can add counters here or I can click the X to remove them. I'll click on plus and you can see lots of different types of counters. And when you select any one of those, it's going to open up even more. So I'm going to scroll down to PhysicalDisk. Let's see what's happening with our disks. And you can choose any one of these types of counters. I'll choose the average disk sec read, and here I can see all the different types of counters that go along with it. I can choose all of them if I'd like. Click Add and click OK. Now you can see those different counters that have been added and you can see the different colors that are going to show up for them. So let's say these two colors, processor time and average disk read, they're just really too close in color. So I'm going to right-click on it and choose properties and I'm going to change it to be a completely different color. Let's say we go with this dark blue, click Apply. And now you can see in this area that we're now showing that particular counter in a different color. I can also change the width and the style as well, make it a little bit easier to see. That might make it better. Sometimes you're going to see the counters are either pegged at the bottom or pegged at the top, and you can change that by changing the scale. The scale of things is not always going to be even. So for instance, for CPUs, the scale is going to be completely different than it will be for ramp. So you may not want to go with a default 1.0 scale for each different type of counter. So if for instance, I change the counter to this point four zeroes and a one, I can do that. And then if it's showing the counter the way I want, great. If it's not, I can go the other direction. And let's say we go to 100. And now we're starting to get a little bit more showing up here at the bottom. And if I change it to 1,000, then we might even be able to see some more. Besides taking a live look at what's happening with our server, I also like to go to data collector sets. This is a way of getting data over time, say over the course of several hours, several days. And you can create what's called a baseline. A baseline allows me to create a file that I can go back to later and create a new baseline and compare the two. And that way, I can see whether or not I need to add more resources or whether my server might be overpowered and I can use those resources elsewhere. So let's say for instance, I'd like to look at all these system diagnostics. I can just right-click and choose Start and it's going to start up all these different diagnostic tests to see where the resources are for those particular counters. I could also do it for system performance and choose Start. And there's just a couple for that particular one and now it's started. And you can also see the location of the files where it's keeping those log files where I can go back to them at a future time and take a look at them in Performance Monitor. I'm going to right-click and choose Stop. And now you can go to reports, choose the type of report. This was a system performance, and there's my report. And here, you can see it gives me a nice view of how everything looks about what was used. For instance, it shows me the IPv4 information, how many packets went out, shows me memory available, things like that. Now you can change this to a graph view, but it doesn't make a lot of sense when you do it. So I'll click online, you can see it's really not something you can easily read histogram bar as well. Really the best way to read any type of long-term collection of data is going to be the report view. Let's take a look at another reporting type of tool and that's going to be the one built right into Server Manager. So I can go to where it says local server and it's going to show me the server that I'm on. The reason why it shows local server as opposed to all servers is I can connect to the other servers from here and I can add roles and features and I can run various tools without having to change servers. And here's a very high level view of things like events. So it's showing me things from the event viewer itself, but it's only showing me things that are going to be warnings, errors, or critical types of problems. When I select any one of these logs, you can get the detailed information just as you would've seen if you went to Event Viewer itself. If I go down to services, I can do something similar as if I were to go to tool services. I can see all the different services and whether or not they are running. Now the other thing I'd like to show you is what's called the Best Practices Analyzer. It's going to analyze the current state of your server and tell you if there's anything that's not set up with the current best practices. So I'll choose Start BPA Scanner, and now it's going to show us if there's any issues. And it usually takes a couple of minutes to run. Beneath that, you see Performance Monitors also built-in to this local server and server manager. It's not as full featured as going into Performance Monitor, but it is a way that you can see the current state of certain types of resources. And then here are the roles and features that are installed on this server. Most of these were the roles and features that were built-in just by installing the server, but if you've added anything to it, then you're going to see those here. So for instance, I installed Windows Admin Center. So you can see that Windows Admin Center showing up. Here, you can see some of the best practices that have already shown up. It's showing three of 111 different areas that I could make better if I go into each area and fix what it says. So for instance, it says here that short file names should be disabled. So you can see what the problem is, you can see the impact and you can see how to fix it. The resolution. Now, once I've resolved this issue, if I re-scan, then it's going to go back and no longer show that particular issue. I can also say, "You know what? That's not really a problem I need to worry about." I'm going to right-click and just choose to exclude that result. So that way, it doesn't show up anymore. There are several menus that you see here. I'm going to choose Excluded Results and now you can see the one that I just excluded is back in the list. You can also go into compliant results, see what it is that you're doing right. And you can also see what things that you should be doing. So here, we see the Smb2CreditsMax should have the recommended value and you can see the configuration and once again, you can go ahead and look at those different options. In this case, I am in compliance, so it's actually telling me. the File Server Best Practices Analyzer has determined I'm in compliance. Besides these excellent built-in tools that we can use to monitor our server, we can also use third party tools such as those in Azure for Intune. And there are plenty of included monitoring tools to ensure your Windows server is operating properly. And you can find many of those tools by going to the start menu and settings areas. We see things such as accessibility, privacy and security, and Windows updates. Use tools like these just to make sure that you are accessible as well as up-to-date on security and updates. And that can keep your servers safe and secure from hackers, malware, and other security issues.