Cinchoo – Using Performance Counters, Part 4

This is the continuation of previous articles on Performance Counters. So far you learned how to create, use and control the performance counters in your application. In this article, I’ll talk about two performance counters category attributes to control the installation of  Performance Counters.

There are

• selfInstall – true to install the counters automatically when you instantiate the object, otherwise it won’t install the counters.
• recreate – true to recreate the counters irrespective of their existence, otherwise skip recreating them if already exists.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <PerformanceCounterCategory name="Random Single Instance Test" selfInstall="true" recreate="true">
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Rate" turnOn="true" />
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Average" turnOn="true" />
  </PerformanceCounterCategory>
  <PerformanceCounterCategory name="Random Multiple Instance Test" selfInstall="true" recreate="true">
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Value" instanceName="Standard" turnOn="true" />
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Value" instanceName="Inverted" turnOn="true" />
  </PerformanceCounterCategory>
</configuration>

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Cinchoo – Using Performance Counters, Part 3

In this section, I’ll talk about installing and uninstalling Performance Counters using Cinchoo framework. This is the explicit way of installing and uninstalling them.

1. Add reference to Cinchoo.Core.dll assembly

2. Namespace Cinchoo.Core.Instrumentation.Performance

For a sample performance counter class defined as below

[ChoPerformanceCounterCategory("Random Single Instance Test", PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance)]
public sealed class SingleInstancePerfCounters : ChoPerformanceCounterCategory
{
    #region Performance Counters

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Rate", "", PerformanceCounterType.RateOfCountsPerSecond32)]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomRate = null;

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Average", "", PerformanceCounterType.AverageCount64)]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomAverage = null;

    #endregion
}

Installing Performance Counters

This is how to install the performance counter using ChoPerformanceCounterInstaller helper class

ChoPerformanceCounterInstaller.Install(typeof(SingleInstancePerfCounters))

Uninstalling Performance Counters

Here is how to uninstall the performance counter using ChoPerformanceCounterInstaller helper class

ChoPerformanceCounterInstaller.Uninstall(typeof(SingleInstancePerfCounters))

Cinchoo – Using Performance Counters, Part 2

This article is the continuation of previous one. So far you learned how to create and use performance counters in your application. In this section, I’ll show you how to control them through configuration.

Cinchoo framework generates meta data configuration file for all the performance counters you created in your application. This file will be created automatically in the application configuration folder. The file name will be [appExeName].perf.meta.

If you application executable name is HelloWorld.exe, this meta data file will be created in the name of HelloWorld.perf.meta. This is the default behavior.

This file name can be overridden. Please visit Framework Configuration Parameters section on how to achieve it.

For the samples from the previous sections, the meta data file will be created as below

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<configuration>
  <PerformanceCounterCategory name="Random Single Instance Test">
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Rate" turnOn="true" />
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Average" turnOn="true" />
  </PerformanceCounterCategory>
  <PerformanceCounterCategory name="Random Multiple Instance Test">
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Value" instanceName="Standard" turnOn="true" />
    <PerformanceCounter name="Random Value" instanceName="Inverted" turnOn="true" />
  </PerformanceCounterCategory>
</configuration>

A PerformanceCounterCategory section will be created for corresponding performance counter category. A PerformanceCounter element will be created for each performance counter in the category.

At present, turnOn is the only fact used by the framework to enable or disable the counter. You can touch this attribute any time (run-time as well), application pick up the changes and act accordingly.

If turnOn is true, the performance counter will be enabled. Otherwise it is disabled. This feature helps you to control the performance counter in the production environment as Performance Counters will affect your application performance.

Cinchoo – Using Performance Counters, Part 1

In this section I’ll discuss about how we can use Cinchoo framework’s performance counter helper class to gather data from an application. So we will first understand the fundamentals and then we will see a simple example from which we will collect some performance data.

Before we begin, if you like to know more information about Performance Counter, please visit below links

MSDN Performance Counter Class

An Article on Performance Counter in CodeProject

Cinchoo framework provides nifty performance counter helper classes to makes it easier for developers to develop applications that use Performance Counter to monitor the health of the application.

There are two types of Performance Counter Categories

• SingleInstance – The performance counter category can have only a single instance.
• MultipleInstance – The performance counter category can have multiple instances.

Creating and using SingleInstance Performance Counters

1. Add reference to Cinchoo.Core.dll assembly

2. Namespace Cinchoo.Core.Instrumentation.Performance

[ChoPerformanceCounterCategory("Random Single Instance Test", PerformanceCounterCategoryType.SingleInstance)]
public sealed class SingleInstancePerfCounters : ChoPerformanceCounterCategory
{
    #region Performance Counters

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Rate", "", PerformanceCounterType.RateOfCountsPerSecond32)]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomRate = null;

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Average", "", PerformanceCounterType.AverageCount64)]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomAverage = null;

    #endregion
}

 Now lets see how to instantiate and use them

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    SingleInstancePerfCounters perfCounter = new SingleInstancePerfCounters();

    Random rand = new Random(42);
    int randMax = 100;

    while (true)
    {
        int r = rand.Next(randMax);

        if (perfCounter.PCRandomRate != null)
            perfCounter.PCRandomRate.Increment();
        if (perfCounter.PCRandomAverage != null)
            perfCounter.PCRandomAverage.IncrementBy(r);

        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

Creating and using MultipleInstance Performance Counters

1. Add reference to Cinchoo.Core.dll assembly

2. Namespace Cinchoo.Core.Instrumentation.Performance

[ChoPerformanceCounterCategory("Random Multiple Instance Test", PerformanceCounterCategoryType.MultiInstance)]
public sealed class MultipleInstancePerfCounters : ChoPerformanceCounterCategory
{
    #region Performance Counters

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Value", "", PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64, "Standard")]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomValue;

    [ChoPerformanceCounter("Random Value", "", PerformanceCounterType.NumberOfItems64, "Inverted")]
    public readonly ChoPerformanceCounter PCRandomInvertedValue;

    #endregion
}

Please remember that the above two Performance counter members are given same category name ‘Random Value’ and different instance names. It qualifies them to create multiple instances of performance counters.

Now lets see how to instantiate and use them

[STAThread]
static void Main(string[] args)
{
    MultipleInstancePerfCounters perfCounter = new MultipleInstancePerfCounters();

    Random rand = new Random(42);
    int randMax = 100;

    while (true)
    {
        int r = rand.Next(randMax);

        if (perfCounter.PCRandomValue != null)
            perfCounter.PCRandomValue.RawValue = r;
        if (perfCounter.PCRandomInvertedValue != null)
            perfCounter.PCRandomInvertedValue.RawValue = randMax - r;

        Thread.Sleep(1000);
    }
}

In the next part, will see how to control the Performance Counters through configuration.