Formerly Known as Windows Performance Counters Widget
The Computer Chart widget graphically shows Windows performance counters from one or more selected computers.
Performance counters are measurements of computers' states or activities. They're useful when you want to find out how computers are affected by what users do with them.
The widget can show any Windows performance counter that your PerformanceGuard administrator has defined.
Use the Windows performance counters menu in the top part of the dashboard to select the counters that you want to view in the widget.
You can select:
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| Example: PhysicalDisk |
If you select a group, you automatically select all counters in that group as well as all instances of those counters.
- Specific counters from a group
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| Example: The %DiskTime counter from the PhysicalDisk group |
If you select a counter, you automatically select all instances of that counter.
- Specific instances of a counter
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| Example: The C: instance of the %DiskTime counter from the PhysicalDisk group |
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| When you use the Windows metrics menu, there's a search field that you can use to search for counters. You can also use the search field to search for computer names, in which case the search results will display all counters that exist for computers whose names match your search. |
When I search, matches are sometimes highlighted in blue, and sometimes not. Why? When your search matches a counter, PerformanceGuard highlights the match in blue letters in your search results. When you search for a computer name, PerformanceGuard lists matching counters in the search results, but it doesn't highlight anything, because there's no exact match between the computer name and the names of relevant counters.
If your widget contains so many different counters that it's difficult to distinguish between individual counters, you can:
- View the values of individual counters if you place your pointer over the data points in the widget's graph area.
- Hide unwanted counters if you click their names in the legend area below the graph. When you want to view the counters again, simply click their names once more.
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| You can only do this if you're a PerformanceGuard administrator. |
Before you set up the widget, you need to find out if you have set up custom counter templates that cover all the counters that you want to be able to view in the widget.
You also need to check that you've applied the custom counter templates to the required agent configuration groups.
Both processes are described in Custom Counter Templates: Collect Data from Any Windows Performance Counter.
It's your custom counter templates, and how you've applied them to agent configuration groups, that determine:
- Which counters that PerformanceGuard collects (and consequently which counters you can view in the widget)
- Which computers that PerformanceGuard collects the counters from
When you're ready to add the widget to a dashboard, you simply select the required counters in the widget setup dialog's Windows performance counters menu. That menu works just like the one described under Select Counters in the previous.
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| Many performance counters in the same widget can be confusing. It's better to use multiple widgets with a few counters in each. |