Monitoring Dynamics CRM 2011 Server performance

Consistently monitoring a system's performance is very important to assess its health. Constant monitoring would assist to identify any potential issue in advance. Microsoft Windows comes with a performance-monitoring tool called Performance Monitor. This tool can be used to assess the performance of Dynamics CRM 2011 Server components.

There are many performance objects built into the operating system to monitor systems' performance. Dynamics CRM 2011 also adds to these performance objects to better monitor Dynamics CRM 2011 Server components. Dynamics CRM 2011 provides additional performance counters that are to be added. We can configure Windows Performance Monitor to obtain and display performance data as system components run on a Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 Deployment.

How to do it…

Perform the following steps to add Dynamics CRM 2011 performance counters:

  1. Log in to the Dynamics CRM 2011 Server machine(s) with local administrative privileges.
  2. Launch the Performance Monitor tool by going to the Start menu and clicking on Run, and then type perfmon.msc in the box and press Enter.
  3. Select Performance Monitor under Monitoring Tools as shown in the following screenshot:
  4. Then, click on the add (plus sign) toolbar icon in the right pane to open the Add Counters dialog box:
  5. From the list of available counters, select the counters specific to Dynamics CRM 2011 and then click on the Add button below as shown in the following screenshot:
  6. Finally, click on OK. The selected counters are added to the list of active counters and the data that they generate is shown in the dynamic graph.

How it works…

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 offers the following performance counters that we need to monitor:

  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Client counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Server counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Authentication counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Outlook Sync counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Discovery counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM LocatorService counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Platform counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Service counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sandbox Client counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Sandbox Host counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM Async Service counters
  • Microsoft Dynamics CRM E-mail Router counters

The necessary performance counters have to be chosen based on the server roles installed on the machine. More detailed information about these performance counters can be downloaded from the following Microsoft website link:

http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27119

Usually, the performance counters are used only for a specified time to check or diagnose any performance issues. Therefore, adding them to the base Performance Monitors is easy and serves the purpose too. In this recipe, the performance counters are directly added to the existing set. Alternatively, a separate data collector set can also be created and then the Dynamics CRM 2011 performance counter can be added to the set. More information on creating a data collector set can be found at http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc722414.aspx.

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