SharePoint PerfWiz alternatives – Syskit Insights comes to the rescue

SharePoint PerfWiz was a tool used to create performance counter logs on a SharePoint Server to troubleshoot performance issues. SharePoint PerfWiz worked by reading and analyzing a specific set of performance counters on the SharePoint server. Unfortunately, the tool has been recently deprecated, which has pushed many SharePoint admins to search for an alternative.

SharePoint PerfWiz Alternatives

Luckily, even with the deprecation of SharePoint PerfWiz, there are a couple of options to troubleshoot the performance issues of your SharePoint farms:

1. Creating a performance counters set for your SharePoint servers
2. Using Syskit Insights built-in performance counter monitoring

Using Performance Monitor

Performance Monitor and Logman.exe are built-in Windows programs that are useful to troubleshoot various performance issues. To create the performance counter set, this Tech Community article states you should use the Logman.exe program. This is the command line that the author used to generate the counter set:

Logman.exe create counter SPCounters -o "c:perflogsBaseline_Counters.blg" -f bincirc -v mmddhhmm -max 250 -c ".NET CLR Exceptions(*)*" ".NET CLR Loading(*)*" ".NET CLR Memory(*)*" ".NET CLR Networking(*)*" ".NET Data Provider for SqlServer(*)*" "AppFabric Caching:Host(*)*" "ASP.NET Apps v2.0.50727(*)*" "ASP.NET Apps v4.0.30319(*)*" "ASP.NET v2.0.50727*" "ASP.NET v4.0.30319*" "ASP.NET(*)*" "LogicalDisk(*)*" "Memory*" "NBT Connection(*)*" "NetLogon(*)*" "Network Interface(*)*" "Office Web Apps - Online Viewing*" "PhysicalDisk(*)*" "Process(*)*" "Processor Information(*)*" "Processor(*)*" "Sandboxed Code Process Pool(*)*" "Search Flow Statistics(*)*" "Search Host Controller(*)*" "Search Linguistics(*)*" "Search Platform Services(*)*" "Search Query Processing(*)*" "Search Query Processor - SharePointServerSearch(*)*" "Search SPLookupService(*)*" "Server Work Queues(*)*" "Server*" "Shared Service Provider(*)*" "SharePoint Disk-Based Cache(*)*" "Sharepoint Distributed Cache Counters(*)*" "SharePoint Foundation (*)*" "SharePoint Foundation Authentication (*)*" "SharePoint Foundation BDC Metadata*" "SharePoint Foundation BDC Online(*)*" "SharePoint Foundation Request Management(*)*" "SharePoint Foundation Security Token Service*" "SharePoint Publishing Cache(*)*" "SharePoint Server Cache instances(*)*" "SharePoint Server Cache*" "SiteComponents*" "System*" "TCPv4*" "TCPV6*" "Thread(w3wp_*)*" "Thread(OWSTIMER_*)*" "W3SVC_W3WP(*)*" "WAS_W3WP(*)*" "Web Service Cache*" "Web Service(*)*" "Windows Workflow Foundation(*)*" -si 00:00:30 -cnf 12:00:00

The best way to use this newly created performance counters set is to start the collection once the performance issues are detected. The main reason to restrict collecting the data only to a period while the problems occur is that these logs can overfill the disks.

To start collecting data, use:

logman start  SPCounters

Similarly to stop the data collection use:

logman stop  SPCounters

After the data is collected, it can be found in C:Perflogs, where you can analyze it and find the underlying reason for performance issues.

Using Syskit Insights

The alternative approach with less manual work is to use Syskit Insights. Syskit Insights is a performance monitoring tool built specifically for the SharePoint environment, and as such, can serve as a replacement for SharePoint PerfWiz.

While it collects and monitors all the performance counters SharePoint PerWiz did, Syskit Insights collects additional performance counters to give you greater insights into your SharePoint server performance. All these performance counters are collected automatically, so you don’t need to set up additional configuration.

Syskit Insights continuously collects the data, so even if the problems are reported late, the data during those problems can be easily accessed. You can also correlate these performance issues with ULS logs to see if there are any connections.

If you liked what you read, feel free to try Syskit Insights for free or schedule a demo with our sales team.