Introduction

The following is a description of the integration with Performance Guard in CapaInstaller and the advantages and possibilities it provides.

The features integrated are utilization, startup, and logon.

The Performance Guard agent records a range of valuable information on each of the clients in the organization.

With the integration to CMS, a limited amount of information is now available in the console, in the form of inventory data, and a number of different views and graphs.

Besides information directly recorded, a Utilization index is defined and used in CMS as an indicator of how well the computer is performing at a given moment. The utilization index is calculated based on the usage of CPU, memory, and the hard drive. In every recording, the highest of these three values in percent between 0 and 100, will be translated into the utilization index.

Three graphs are available in the detail view for computers, presenting the collected data in an easy to read form. The following is a short description of the three graphs.

1) Detailed

Each recording of the utilization index can be viewed on a graph for a selected computer, in what is referred to as a detailed graph. This can be used to identify spikes on certain times of the day, where the performance of the computer is poor. If a utilization index spike is identified, you can zoom in on the graph for that period, and by hovering the mouse on the spikes, get information on CPU, memory, and hard drive usage during that period to further figure out what is causing the drop in performance.

If spikes occur at the same time of day, it is likely caused by software like antivirus scanning the disk or auto-update of software, but could of course be caused by any number of reasons.

2) Average

While the detailed information, which is recorded as often as every 3rd minutes, is useful in identifying problems such as those mentioned above, the average utilization index can be useful in identifying more general performance issues on computers in your organization.

A graph consisting of a series of columns is available to visualize the average utilization index for a computer. Each column represents the average utilization index for one day, and by hovering the mouse over a column you can see the date and exact value that the column represents.

3) Startup/logon

The 3rd and final graph available is a graph showing both startup and logon times of a computer. This graph also uses columns to visualize the data, and each column represents either the startup time, logon time, or even both. The columns are colored to make it easy to distinguish the two. Blue representing startup time and green representing logon time.

Because the two are related in that a logon is often a direct extension of a startup, it is made possible to stack the two on top of each other into one column, still retaining the colorization of each type. This will give you an easy overview of the time it takes from the user starts the computer till it is ready for use, which is the primary focus of most users.
Even though the total time is the most important value for the user, having both the startup and login times available, will make it easier for administrators to locate the cause if a user reports long total startup/login times.

Performance Guard Views

A number of views are available to further analyze the performance, startup times, and logon times of the computers in your organization.

With utilization index views, you can configure a view to show computers above a specified threshold based on the average utilization index. This lets you get a clear picture of how well your computers are performing, and quickly identify those that are above a defined acceptable threshold. Those above that threshold might be in need of either software or hardware upgrades or other optimizations to improve performance. Using the detailed graph may help narrow down the specific needs of a computer to either the CPU, memory, or hard drive issues.

Startup and login views will help you identify computers in your organization, that is taking longer than what you consider acceptable to startup or logon. There can be a number of reasons why a startup or logon may take a long time to finish, and these views let you focus on those computers with the biggest issues.

Field descriptions

Element	Description
Performance Guard Agent	The Performance Guard Agent is required on a client to get the information described above.
Utilization Index	An indicator of how well a computer is performing.
Detailed Graph	Graph showing utilization index.
Average Graph	Graph showing average utilization index.
Startup logon Graph	Graph showing startup and logon times.
Utilization View	The utilization views show which computers are above a specified utilization threshold, which is based on the usage of their CPU, memory, and hard drive.
Startup Logon view	The startup and logon views show which computers are at or above a specified threshold based on either startup or logon time.

Browser not supported