Creating a Baseline

Abstract

In the previous three chapters, you learned a lot about various possible system bottlenecks caused by memory, the disk, and the CPU. I also introduced a number of Performance Monitor metrics for gathering data on these parts of the system. Within the descriptions of most of the counters, I referred to comparing your metric to a baseline. This chapter will cover how to gather your metrics so that you have that baseline for later comparison. I’ll go over how to configure an automated method of gathering this information. A baseline is a fundamental part of understanding system behavior, so you should always have one available. This chapter covers the following topics:

• Considerations for monitoring virtual and hosted machines

• How to set up an automated collection of Performance Monitor metrics

• Considerations to avoid issues when using Performance Monitor

• Baselines for Azure SQL Database

• Creating a baseline