Configuring More Performance Counters

The initial set of performance counters described in the previous section is a convenient way to add a machine for monitoring quickly.

You can extend the initial set by adding more counters in the areas you wish to monitor.

To add more performance counters to the selected machine

Click Add Performance Counters (1) on the toolbar. The Add Performance Counters dialog (a) will appear
From the drop-down (b), select the performance objects to monitor.
Select one or more counters (c).
You may need to select one or more instances of the counter(s) (d).
Highlight the counter to see its description (e).
Click Add (f) to add the counter to the New Counter List (g).
Click Delete to remove the highlighted counters from the New Counter List.
When finished adding new counters, click Save (h) to add the New Counter List to the Test.

Performance counters' properties, as well as properties of the graphs and machines, are displayed in the property grid (2) below the graph tree (3). To change any property, select an object (4) and modify any none read-only property (5) in the grid.

Adding and deleting graph, machine, and performance counters operations are also available from the context menu on the graph tree (6)

The selected set of performance counters is stored with the test configuration. After reopening a test, its list of performance counters will be retrieved

Info: Many sources are explaining Windows performance counters, for example:

System http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/cc768048.aspx
ASP.NET http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/fxk122b4.aspx
SQL Server http://www.extremeexperts.com/sql/articles/sqlcounters.aspx
Microsoft Dynamics CRM http://www.microsoft.com/en-us/download/details.aspx?id=27119

Note: If you added the performance counters to the test a while ago, they must be valid to work. For example, performance counters on a remote server will work only if the same server name or IP address still exists, and the server is accessible with the saved credentials.

Selecting multiple counters and instances

If multiple counters and multiple instances are selected then a counter will be added for every instance.