The
Task Manager is a familiar monitoring tool found in Windows Server 2008
R2. Ultimately, the tool is very similar to the Task Manager included
with previous versions of Windows such as Windows Server 2003. It still
provides an instant view of system resources, such as processor
activity, process activity, memory usage, networking activity, user
information, and resource consumption. However, there are some
noticeable changes, including the addition of a Services tab and the
ability to launch the Resource Monitor directly from the Performance
tab.
The Windows Server 2008 R2 Task
Manager is very useful for an immediate view of key system operations.
It comes in handy when a user notes slow response time, system problems,
or other nondescript problems with the network. With just a quick
glance at the Task Manager, you can see whether a server is using all
available disk, processor, memory, or networking resources.
There are three methods to launch the Task Manager:
Method 1— Right-click the taskbar and select Task Manager.
Method 2— Press Ctrl+Shift+Esc.
Method 3— Press Ctrl+Alt+Del and select Start Task Manager.
When the Task Manager loads, you will notice six tabs, as shown in Figure1.
Tip
If you are working on other
applications and want to hide the Task Manager, deselect Always on Top
in the Task Manager’s Options menu. In addition, select Hide When
Minimized to Keep the Task Manager off the taskbar when minimized.
The following sections provide a closer look at how helpful the Task Manager components can be.
Monitoring Applications
The
first tab on the Task Manager is the Applications tab. The Applications
tab provides a list of tasks in the left column and the status of these
applications in the right column. The status information enables you to
determine whether an application is running and allows you to terminate
an application that is not responding. To stop such an application,
highlight the particular application and click End Task at the bottom of
the Task Manager. You can also switch to another application if you
have several applications running. To do so, highlight the program and
click Switch To at the bottom of the Task Manager. Finally, you can
create a dump file that can be used when a point-in-time snapshot of
every process running is needed for advanced troubleshooting. To create a
dump file, right-click on an application and select Create Dump File.
Monitoring Processes
The second Task Manager tab is
the Processes tab. It provides a list of running processes, or Image
Names, on the server. It also measures the performance in simple data
format. This information includes CPU percent used, memory allocated to
each process, and username used in initiating a process, which includes
system, local, and network services.
You can sort the processes by
clicking the CPU or Memory (Private Working Set) column header. The
processes are then sorted in order of usage. This way, you can tell
which one is using the most of these resources and is slowing down
performance of your server. You can terminate a process by selecting the
process and clicking the End Process button.
Many other performance or
process measures can be removed or added to the Processes tab. They
include, but are not limited to, process identifier (PID), CPU time,
session ID, and page faults. To add these measures, select View, Select
Columns to open the Select Column property page. Here, you can add
process counters to the process list or remove them from the list.
Monitoring Services
With the release of Windows
Server 2008, the newest edition to the family of Task Manager tabs was
the Services tab. When selected, you can quickly assess and troubleshoot
a specific service by viewing whether it has stopped or is still
running. The Services tab also offers additional key details, including
the service name, service description, and service group. In addition,
it is also possible to launch the Services snap-in if there is a need to
make changes to a specific service. For example, if you know a given
service should be running and you don’t see it running on the Processes
tab (a common one is spoolsv.exe,
which is the Windows Print Spooler service executable), you can just go
to the Services tab and attempt to start the service from there. It’s
very rudimentary, but in keeping with what Task Manager is typically
used for—it does offer a quick overview of system status and preliminary
problem resolution.
