The Windows NT Performance Monitor

The Windows NT Server operating system provides a utility called the Performance Monitor, which can display statistics for system resources such as processors, memory, file handles, threads, and processes. The Performance Monitor allows user-written applications to publish their own statistics.

Your gateway can send its own performance statistics to the Windows NT Performance Monitor by using the Microsoft Exchange SDK performance monitor functions. These functions provide access to a library for performing statistical calculations, and a library for managing a memory-mapped file that is used as an asynchronous communication mechanism between your gateway and the Performance Monitor.

The Windows NT Performance Monitor keeps track of a set of objects, each of which represents a system resource. Each object has a set of counters that can provide device usage, queue length, delay, throughput, and internal congestion measurements. Your gateway can be registered as an object for performance monitoring. Multiple instances of an object are allowed, such as when multiple instances of your gateway are running.

The Performance Monitor allows you to do the following:

• View data from any number of computers simultaneously.
• View and dynamically change charts that reflect current activity and show counter values that are updated at a user-defined frequency.
• Export data from charts, logs, alert logs, and reports to spreadsheet or database programs for further manipulation.
• Add system alerts that list an event in the alert log and optionally notify the system administrator by displaying the alert view or issuing a network alert.
• Run a predefined program when a counter value goes over or under a user-defined value. This is useful for starting or stopping additional threads or processes to respond to varying workloads.
• Create log files containing data about various objects from different computers.
• Create one long-term archive by jointing pieces of other existing log files.
• View current activity reports or create reports from existing log files.
• Save individual chart, alert, log, or report settings, or the entire workspace setup, and reuse when needed.

You can use the Performance Monitor to send alerts from your gateway. To do this, set up an alert in the Performance Monitor and specify a computer name to which the alert will be sent. If the receiving computer is running a program that monitors alerts, it will receive the alert.

For an overview of performance monitoring, see the Win32 Programmer’s Reference.