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Performance and monitoring
15 Dell EMC SC Series: Microsoft Exchange Server Best Practices | CML1037
3 Performance and monitoring
3.1 Monitoring
Performance Monitor is a helpful tool for monitoring the overall operations of Exchange server. Several
specific counters are good indicators of performance bottlenecks. The performance counters shown in Table
1 are helpful in monitoring and troubleshooting. The thresholds provided are based on standard industry
guidance.
By default, the real-time view of Performance Monitor shows the last 1:40 (1 minute, 40 seconds), measuring
every 2 seconds and taking the average of the current measurement and last measurement.
If a performance issue is suspected, it is recommended to set up Performance Monitor to record key counters
during the period of peak usage when the problem occurs.
Performance counters
Physical disk counters
Memory counters
Exchange counters
Avg. Queue Length
Available MBytes
MSExchangeIS Store –
RPC Average Latency
Avg. Disk Sec/Transfer
Pages/sec
Database - Database
Cache % Hits
Disk Transfers/sec
Processor counters
% Disk Idle
% Processor Time
Avg. Disk Bytes/Transfer
Network counters
Avg. Disk Sec/Read
Bytes Total/sec
Avg. Disk Sec/Write
3.1.1 Monitoring the database defragmentation process
In Microsoft Exchange Server 2016, the following performance counters for monitoring the behavior of
database defragmentation have been added for use with Performance Monitor:
• Database ==> Instances \ Defragmentation tasks: background database defragmentation tasks
that are currently executing
• Database ==> Defragmentation Tasks Pending: background database defragmentation tasks that
are currently pending
• Database ==> Instances \ Database Maintenance Duration: the number of hours that have passed
since maintenance last completed for this database
• Database ==> Instances \ Database Maintenance Pages Bad Checksums: the number of non-
correctable page checksums encountered during a database maintenance pass