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The Performance Sentry Portal provides an easily deployed, browser-based tool for performance visualization, troubleshooting, and capacity planning. The Portal makes it easy to examine detailed information about daily activity, as well as to chart long-term trends.
Combined with its MS-SQL database, the Portal’s graphical reporting tools allow system administrators to easily track and report on the granular Windows Server performance data collected by distributed Performance Sentry Agents.
The Performance Sentry Portal is made up of two distinct components. The MS-SQL Performance Database (PDB) contains the Windows Server performance data generated by Performance Sentry, while the browser-based graphical reporting engine provides a variety of intelligently defined, yet customizable, charts and graphs. Delivering Windows Server performance management information via the browser makes key information easily available to everyone in the enterprise who needs it.
Performance Sentry Performance Database
Performance Sentry comes with a powerful Microsoft SQL Server performance database that allows you to correlate and analyze hundreds of historical performance metrics. Performance data gathered by the data collection agents is cleaned, transformed, and stored in a performance data warehouse that keeps track of historical data and automatically reduces or deletes unnecessary data over time.
By building a database of performance data, Performance Sentry helps you understand how your system resources are being utilized, pinpoint trends, and tune your system for optimum performance.
Performance Sentry PDB gives you the power you need to:
- Transfer local data files to a consolidation server
- Summarize the detail file and maintain history
- Correlate data across machines
- Pinpoint trends and analyze performance indicators
- Uncover performance problems before your users do
- Tune Your System for Optimum Performance
Regardless of whether the problem is a slow running system or the need to determine how much machine you will need to run a new application, you need to be able to determine what is normal for your environment in order to maintain your service levels in the face of an ever-increasing workload.
The most effective way to get a handle on your environment is by building a decision support warehouse of performance data and by analyzing the changes in your system performance over time.
Performance Sentry Data Access Services SDK
The SDK will allow 3rd Party .NET applications to retrieve and utilize the historical performance data from the Microsoft SQL Server-based Performance Sentry Performance Database (PDB).
The SDK consists of the DTS.Common.DataAccess.Services assembly which implements the PerformanceDataService class using C# in .NET 4.0. This class connects to the PDB to retrieve the requested performance data either by using LINQ or dynamic SQL queries. The class includes methods to get machine, performance object, and performance counter information. Connection management follows the .NET connection management paradigm for the SQLConnection class.
To learn more about Data Access Services and to view and run a sample .NET project, download the Data Access Services SDK.
