Monitoring the K2 blackpearl Environment
Performance Monitoring is a complex subject and in some ways more of an art than a science. With over a thousand performance counters to select from, choosing the right counters to monitor can be a significant task. The choice can be impacted by the role of the system being monitored and whether the focus is capacity planning, ensuring availability, scaling upwards, monitoring for possible problems, or troubleshooting issues that have arisen. Additionally, application performance monitoring aids in preventing performance issues before they ever arise, driving further optimization of the applications to provide an even better user experience, and determining hardware requirements to sustain the application. On-going and routine monitoring of system resources enables early detection of possible problems in the form of constraints and over or under usage of resources.
Performance Counters need to be enabled in the K2server.setup file stored at: C:Program Files (x86)K2 blackpearlHost ServerBin. The following line needs to be edited:
<PerfMonCounters Enable="False" Interval="15000" />
- Enable can be either “True” or “False”
- Interval is measured in milliseconds and indicates the K2 performance counter data is to be updated every 15 seconds
For the performance counters to work, set Enable="True"
Once the file is changed the K2 Host Server Service must be restarted before trying to add counters.
The attached document contains an overview of the recommended performance monitoring options for monitoring K2 blackpearl environments as well as some additional useful counters and their descriptions. Please note that all of the best practices included in this document were sourced from freely accessible support, blog and technical sites, as well as best practices. As there is a very wide scope in system counters to choose for variants of systems and applications, this document is aimed at pointing out the most useful counters for monitoring a typical K2 blackpearl installation.
The foundation for effectively monitoring performance and keeping the system running is having in-depth knowledge of the K2 blackpearl components. In-depth knowledge can be gained by attending training courses and reading all accompanying documentation, including whitepapers and product documentation. In addition to product knowledge, a solid understanding and capability to set up and use the following is advantageous:
- Windows security
- Networking
- Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (or WSS 3.0)
- InfoPath
- Visual Studio Basic Coding Skills
- SQL Server
- IIS Server
