Monitoring system resources usage on many computers

[semo]

I am trying to find the best method to monitor usage of system resources on about a dozen computers on our network.

I want to collect about a week or so of usage and plot it all to compare the machines and find the most underutilized.

I am guess the best way to approach this is by looking at the user memory usage, CPU time and Queue depth or total bytes r/w.

Ideally I can script or deploy this. The client machines run Windows 7 x86 and I have domain admin rights.

Any ideas or guides?

 

[Modelworks]

check out admin tools/performance monitor
You can set up the kind up information you want there and have it put into sets you can view later. Covers everything from smart information on drives to memory.

 

[semo]

Thanks Modelworks. I have looked at this tool and after some experimenting I haven't been able to get it to do what I wanted. Is there a guide somewhere which explains how to do simple things and so on?

 

[semo]

It seems WhatsUp Gold can do something like what I need if SNMP is enabled on the clients.

I'm still looking for something that is free and that can possibly automate things for me (e.g. install a client that will enable all the SNMP settings and so on). I need to find out how much usage a group of computers are seeing and upgrade appropriately

 

[theevilsharpie]

The Windows Performance monitor will do what you want. By default, it will display a real-time view, but the Data Collector Sets (aka Performance Logs and Alerts in previous versions) can collect performance data over a period of time.

Since you have domain admin rights, I'd recommend setting up a central server or workstation to query the computers in question with the performance counters you want. This will let you see the performance statistics for the computers that you're comparing all in one report.

 

[Nothinman]

Yea, perfmon will do it but it's pretty tedious. Something like Cacti (or maybe ZenOSS) can do it with SNMP enabled, but you still need to install SNMP and setup a community string.

 

[semo]

Thanks for the suggestions guys but I don't think I'll be able to achieve what I need using the built-in tools so I've started another thread:

http://forums.anandtech.com/showthread.php?p=30981084#post30981084

 

[Modelworks]

Powershell is another option. It can do what you want but you really need someone familiar with how it works to customize it for the data you want.