Lesson Nine: System Monitoring and Maintenance

This week's lesson covered a very important role of the IP support professional - that of monitoring system performance and troubleshooting system failures.

Modern Windows versions have several methods to help discern points of failure or poor performance.  They include the Windows Memory Diagnostic Tool, which is a neat tool that looks for defective memory.  Bad RAM can be one of the most frustrating items to discover, and this tool helps to find bad RAM and mark it to not be used.

Another tool is the Windows Network Diagnostics Tool to check and verify network connectivity.  This can help to find problems in your network infrastructure by looking at issues with network adapters, shared folders, internet connections, incoming connections, network printers and HomeGroups.  This tool runs automatically when a problem is detected and displays possible solutions for a discovered problem.

Startup Repair is a tool that I have used several times to automatically fix an inability a system that won't start successfully.  If the tool can't automatically fix the problem preventing system boot, it will roll back the system to the last known good state.

The System Configuration tool (better known as msconfig.exe) has been around since at least Windows XP.  It help to troubleshoot system issues and optimize startup.  Using this tool requires that the system be able to boot up normally.

The lesson went on to talk about system logs, and how to use them to gain understanding about a machine.  It's possible to configure a machine to collect system logs from many different computers in order to be able to manage problems from one central spot.  This can be done either by having that collector machine go out and get logs from the various clients, but in general it is better practice to configure the clients to push logs to the collector computer.  This can be controlled by application of local system and group policies.

Another important aspect of computer management is the discovery of how well the system is capable of performing.  This can be done by use of the Windows Performance Index beginning with Windows Vista.  This aggregates a system score of hardware components that is predicated on the lowest score.  Using this tool helps to understand how to best upgrade a machine.  In Windows 8.1, the graphical output has been eliminated but the data is still available through PowerShell commands.

The Windows Performance Monitor display a real time graph of system performance.  You can use collector objects to track performance of time.  It's also possible to generate a system health report using this tool.

The Windows Reliability Monitor is a neat tool that I was not aware of before this week's lesson.  I tracks system fault and other performance issues and gives the administrator the option to look back at the previous year on a daily or weekly basis to discover trends and fault issues.  This is a very useful tool that I will now be able to use to help in system troubleshooting.

They went on to talk about other system performance issues including changing visual effects, changing the size and location of the system memory paging file and processor scheduling to favor foreground or background processes.  You can also increase system performance by using the ReadyBoost feature by using faster flash memory to decrease cache access times.

Remote access to a system is an important arrow in any sysadmin's quiver.  It's now possible to use the Windows Remote Shell to gain command line control to run PowerShell commands or to remotely execute applications.

Windows Remote Desktop is another tool that has been around for a long time that remains useful for today's needs.  It allows graphical control of a remote machine and allows complete control of that machine.  This is a tool that is extremely useful for the busy sysadmin.

Windows Remote Assistance operates a lot like Remote Desktop, but has a few important differences.  It does allow shadowing, so that a remote user and the local user can see and access the same things at the same time.  Unlike a Remote Desktop connection, which can be interrupted and reconnected, Remote Assistance cannot be reconnected.  It's possible for the remote user to control the length of time a helper is given access to a remote machine.  It's very useful for connections that are only made once or a limited number of times.

Lots of useful stuff here this week -- I'm glad I learned it!