Monitoring Performance Thresholds 

Windows performance counters allow your applications and components to publish, capture, and analyze the performance data that applications, services, and drivers provide. You can use this information to determine system bottlenecks and fine-tune system and application performance. For example, you might use a performance counter to track the amount of time required to process an order or query a database, or you might monitor the size of a message queue and write code that performs a specific action whenever the queue reaches a preset limit.

Using the PerformanceCounter component and language features in Visual Studio and the .NET Framework SDK, you can easily connect to performance counters on both local and remote computers and retrieve values from these counters. You can also write values to existing custom counters (those created with the .NET Framework) on the local computer and create your own custom counters on computers that have Windows installed.

In This Section

• Introduction to Monitoring Performance Thresholds
  Provides basic information on performance counter features.

• How to: Create PerformanceCounter Component Instances
  Gives directions for creating instances of and configuring PerformanceCounter components in your projects.

• How to: Configure PerformanceCounter Component Instances
  Describes how to set properties for the PerformanceCounter components you create.

• Category and Counter Management
  Describes the processes for creating, deleting, and querying performance counters and the categories that classify them.

• How to: Write Values to Performance Counters
  Gives instructions for incrementing or decrementing a performance counter's value.

• Performance Counter Value Retrieval
  Explains the process of reading values from and writing values to a counter.

Related Sections

• PerformanceCounter Class
  Describes the major features of the PerformanceCounter class.

• PerformanceCounterCategory Class
  Describes the major features of the PerformanceCounterCategory class.

• Performance Counter Programming Architecture
  Explains the language elements used in PerformanceCounter component programming.

• Performance Counter Types
  Describes the types of performance counters that you might work with.

• Using Installation Components
  Describes how to use the Add Installer link in the Properties window to add an installation component to applications with PerformanceCounter component instances.

• Default Project Templates in Visual Studio
  Describes the projects types used in this chapter and how to choose between them.

• Deploying Applications and Components
  Lists the major pages about deployment and the information they contain.

• Programming with Components
  Presents a high-level overview of component programming and the Help pages available on it.