Set up Performance Monitor counters

Article
12/13/2011
3 minutes to read

You can use the Performance Monitor counters that are included with Microsoft Dynamics AX to help you monitor the usage of system resources. With counters you can collect and view real-time performance data about server resources such as processor and memory use, and about Microsoft Dynamics AX and Microsoft SQL Server resources such as locks and transactions.

The following table describes the counters for the Microsoft Dynamics AX Object Server performance object.

Counter	Description
Active Sessions	The number of currently active server sessions.
Number of Bytes Received by Server	The number of bytes received by the Application Object Server (AOS) instance since it started.
Number of Bytes Sent by Server	The number of bytes sent by the AOS instance since it started.
Number of Client Requests	The number of client-to-server requests since the AOS instance started.
Number of Client Requests per Second	The number of client-to-server requests processed per second by the AOS instance.
Number of Server Requests	The number of server-to-client requests processed since the AOS instance started.
Total Sessions	The total number of active sessions since the AOS instance started.

The following table describes the counters available for the Microsoft Dynamics AX: Enterprise Portal performance object. All Enterprise Portal counters are .NET Business Connector counters. If you call the .NET Business Connector through another application, the same counters can be used.

Counter	Description
Number of Sessions	The number of currently active .NET Business Connector sessions.
Web Part Execution Time	The time in seconds taken to execute and render a Web Part.
Fatal Session Exceptions	The number of fatal .NET Business Connector session exceptions. For Enterprise Portal, this means that the page was not rendered. A Windows SharePoint Services error page was displayed to the user.
Nonfatal Session Exceptions	The number of nonfatal .NET Business Connector session exceptions. For Enterprise Portal, this means that the page was rendered, but some Web Parts on the page were not rendered.
Xpp Session Exceptions	The number of X++ .NET session exceptions.
Sessions Allocated	The total number of .NET Business Connector sessions allocated since AOS startup.
Sessions Disposed	The total number of .NET Business Connector sessions disposed of since AOS startup.
Session Allocation Rate	The number of .NET Business Connector sessions allocated per second.

You may also want to monitor counters for the AOS process (Ax32Serv), such as CPU usage, memory usage, handle counts, and thread counts.

Add counters

Open the Performance window (Start > Administrative Tools > Performance).
Click Add or press CTRL+I.
In the Add Counters dialog box, verify that the correct server name appears.
Select Select Counters from Computer.
In the Performance Object list, select an object to add counters for, such as Microsoft Dynamics AX Object Server.
Select all counters for the object, or select individual counters.
Click Add, and then click Close.

Set up an alert

On the navigation tree of the Performance window, expand Performance Logs and Alerts.
Right-click Alerts, and then click New Alert Settings.
In the New Alert Settings dialog box, type a name for the new alert, and then click OK.
On the General tab of the dialog box for the new alert, add a comment, and then click Add to add a counter to the alert.

All alerts must have at least one counter.
In the Add Counters dialog box, select a Microsoft Dynamics AX object from the Performance Object list, and then select a counter from the Select counters from list.
To add the counter to the alert, click Add. You can continue to add counters, or you can click Close to return to the dialog box for the new alert.
In the new alert dialog box, select either Over or Under in the Alert when the value is list, and then enter a threshold value in Limit.
Click Apply.

The alert is generated when the value for the counter is more than or less than the threshold value (depending on whether you selected Over or Under).
In the Sample data every boxes, set the sampling frequency.
On the Action tab, set actions to occur every time the alert is triggered.
On the Schedule tab, set the start and stop schedule for the alert scan.