This chapter looks at how you would plan to monitor resources and performance on a computer running Windows Server 2008 R2. It considers the various tools that tell you what resources are available on a computer and that report problems encountered when using a resource, and it discusses monitoring servers and services for performance and optimization, establishing baselines and logs to identify and interpret trends, and determining where bottlenecks might occur before they happen.

It also looks at checking the potential of the computer to perform resource-intensive tasks and how to capture both local events and events on other computers. This chapter is about forward planning, identifying trends, and solving issues before they become apparent to the user. However, planning requires that you know exactly what each tool can offer, and the chapter describes the facilities you have available to you to do this. Sometimes, services, processes, and applications encounter problems, and the chapter considers how you can deal with them.