Performance Sentry

Never miss critical performance data again!

Performance Sentry was engineered from the ground up to monitor Windows Server performance and pinpoint application bottlenecks.

Performance Sentry gathers mountains of Windows performance data…across thousands of enterprise servers…and reports only the most meaningful metrics. So you can solve performance problems before they impact your users.

When you combine Performance Sentry’s intelligent data collection capabilities and easy administration tools, its full-function Microsoft SQL Server-based performance database, and comprehensive visibility and reporting solutions, you have the ability to take control of your critical Windows Servers and applications like never before.

Consistency…Clarity…Confidence

Performance Sentry delivers the industry’s most effective Windows performance management tools to help you optimize a previously uncontrolled environment. As a result, you can:

  • Deploy efficient and cost-effective monitoring across large-scale Windows environments
  • Identify performance bottlenecks slowing down your system
  • Scale performance monitoring effortlessly to hundreds or even thousands of machines
  • Gain the peace of mind that comes from a steady and stable Windows environment

Intelligent Data Collection

Performance Sentry is a distributed system, designed to scale effortlessly across even the largest Windows networks. It is easy to deploy; and once installed, it provides worry-free operation.

Performance Sentry is based on intelligent data collection agents deployed across every Windows Server in your environment. The Performance Sentry Agent delivers continuous, low-impact monitoring for all your performance, reporting, analysis, and capacity planning needs.

The Performance Sentry Agent runs continuously as a Windows service in unattended mode — logging the performance metrics you define around the clock. You specify when a collection cycle begins and the duration of each cycle. With continuous operation from system start-up to shut down, you will never miss critical performance management data again.

This lightweight and affordable distributed agent approach makes Performance Sentry scalable to thousands of Windows Servers.

Performance Sentry Agent Features

  • Collects thousands of metrics to support problem diagnosis and capacity planning
  • Extends and improves the data collection utilities available in Windows
  • Logs data to local disk for complete scalability
  • Filters data automatically
  • Alerts you in real-time to emerging performance problems
  • Runs continuously as a Windows service
  • Is easy to deploy and operate
  • Offers built-in scheduling and file management
  • Scales to thousands of servers
  • Compatible with SAS® IT Resource Management
  • Compatible with MXG©
  • Performance Sentry Administration Console

Performance Sentry Administration Features

The Performance Sentry Administration Console is an intuitive user interface that allows you to manage Performance Sentry data collection. The console helps you specify the parameters Performance Sentry uses for data collection. With this easy-to-use interface, you can use built-in scheduling facilities to:

  • Define which performance metrics (Objects and Counters) you want to collect
  • Specify how frequently you want to collect data and indicate other start-up parameters
  • Specify the filters that manage the volume of information written to the data files
  • Suspend data collection at a specified time and then resume collecting data when you are ready again
  • Monitor and change the status of performance data collection running on computers in your network
  • Value-Added Administration Tools

You can choose among the predefined Data Collection Sets (DCS) we provide, or you can customize your own using the graphical DCS Editor. With DCS Editor, you can easily copy, rename, and modify the predefined data collection.

Performance Sentry Administration

Additionally, DCSs are stored as XML files, making it easy to create a concise Performance Sentry Agent package that can be delivered to many machines via an automated software distribution facility such as Microsoft’s Systems Management Server.

Performance Sentry SDK

The Performance Sentry SDK allows third-party applications to retrieve near real-time and historical performance data from a particular machine running the Performance Sentry Collection Service. Using the SDK, third-party applications are able to retrieve data collected by the service as needed for troubleshooting instead of having to wait for nightly cycle end processing or having to process the entire SMF data collection file in ad-hoc situations.   The SDK contains program examples written in C# and PowerShell and contains a fully functional sample application.  The .NET 4.0 Framework is required for SDK samples written in .NET.

Microsoft System Center Operations Manager (SCOM) Performance Sentry Query Tool Management Pack (MP)

The Performance Sentry Query Tool Management Pack for SCOM uses the same application interface used by the SDK mentioned above to connect to the desired machine to retrieve near real-time or historical performance data and create charts.  The data can then be exported to a CSV file.  This management pack gives the SCOM administrator access to very detailed historical performance data to diagnose system performance leading up to an SCOM alert or event for a particular server.  Detailed data, that, because of scalability problems, is simply not available in native SCOM configurations.

Quality Tool Process Utilization

Click the ‘Free Trial’ button at the top of this page to download Performance Sentry, the SDK, and the SCOM Management Pack

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