Basic Server Monitoring Counters

A typical e-business application runs on an environment with different kinds of servers like the application server, web server, and database server. While doing performance testing you should monitor all the servers at least by using basic monitoring counters. Let’s have a quick look at server type and related monitoring metrics:

1. Web Server Monitoring Counters:

A web server delivers content or services to end users over the internet. It translates the web URL path to the system resource and responds with the requested system resource. i.e. it accepts the HTTP requests from the clients (via web browsers) and serves it if the requests are pertaining to static contents (like images or HTML documents). The basic performance metrics include:

• Server Throughput
• Requests per second
• CPU usage
• Memory Usage
• Disk Usage

2. Application Server:

App server provides the business logic of the web application. The client requests (via web browser) pertaining to the dynamic contents (like JSP page which needs to render and fetch data from the database server). The key performance metrics include:

• % Processor Time
• Page Faults per second
• Avg. Disk Queue Length
• Pages per second
• Requests per second
• CPU usage
• Memory Usage

3. Database Server:

It is a data storage and retrieval system which manages data queries. It provides data to the application server when requested. The key performance metrics include:

• Query response times
• CPU utilization 
• Memory utilization

Note: The above-mentioned counters are the basic counters which are used for server monitoring in the normal case. You can add more counters as per your requirement.

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