Memory Usage Monitoring

The 'Memory Monitor' GUI module is a dedicated memory monitoring module showing the memory usage, the amount of free memory, the amount of used memory, the size of the memory cache, the cache peak size, the cache fault rate, the page file usage, the page file peak usage and the page fault rate.

All memory usage gauges, which are located on the top-side of the window, provide the ability to display the current value, average value or the maximum value. In addition, all memory usage counters, display the minimum, maximum and average value on the counter's status bar.

In addition, the user is provided with the ability to save system monitoring reports into a number of standard formats including HTML, PDF, Excel, text, CSV and XML. In order to save a system monitoring report, press the 'Save' button located on the main toolbar, select an appropriate report format, enter a report file name and press the 'Save' button.

Memory Monitoring Counters

In addition to the dedicated memory monitor module, the user can use the customizable 'System Monitor' module to configure user-custom memory monitoring profiles. In order to add a memory usage counter, press the 'Add' button located on the main toolbar, selected the 'Memory Usage' counters category in the left-side view and then select an appropriate memory usage counter in the middle view. In addition, in order to monitor the memory usage in a remote computer via the network, press the 'Connect' button located in the bottom-left corner and specify the host name of the remote computer to monitor.

• Memory Usage - this counter measures the percentage of the used system memory by calculating the ratio of memory committed bytes to the memory commit limit. Committed memory is the physical memory in use for which space has been reserved in the paging file should it need to be written to disk. The commit limit is determined by the size of the paging file. If the paging file is enlarged, the commit limit increases, and the ratio is reduced.
• Memory Free - this counter measures the amount of physical memory, in Megabytes, immediately available for allocation to a process or for system use. It equals to the sum of memory assigned to the standby, free and zero page lists.
• Memory Used - this counter measures the amount of committed virtual memory, in Megabytes. Committed memory is the physical memory which has space reserved on the disk paging files.
• Memory Cache - this counter displays the total amount of the cached system memory in Megabytes by calculating the sum of the system cache resident memory, system driver resident memory, system code resident memory and paged pool resident memory.
• Memory Cache Peak - this counter shows the maximum number of bytes used by the file system cache since the system was last restarted. This might be larger than the current size of the memory cache.
• Memory Cache Fault Rate - this counter measures the rate at which faults occur when a page sought in the file system cache is not found and must be retrieved from elsewhere in memory or from the disk. The file system cache is an area of physical memory that stores recently used pages of data for applications. Cache activity is a reliable indicator of most application I/O operations.
• Memory Page Fault Rate - this counter measures the average number of pages faulted per second. It is measured in number of pages faulted per second because only one page is faulted in each fault operation, hence this is also equal to the number of page fault operations.
• Memory Page Read Rate - this counter measures the rate at which the disk was read to resolve hard page faults. It shows the number of read operations, without regard to the number of pages retrieved in each operation.
• Memory Page Write Rate - this counter measures the rate at which pages are written to disk to free up space in physical memory. Pages are written to disk only if they are changed while in physical memory, so they are likely to hold data, not code. This counter shows write operations, without regard to the number of pages written in each operation.
• Memory Page File Usage - this counter measures the current usage of all memory page files in percent.
• Memory Page File Peak - this counter measures the peak usage of all memory page files in percent.
• Memory Nonpaged Pool Used - this counter monitors the amount of system memory used from the non-paged memory pool. The non-paged memory pool is an area of system memory for objects that cannot be written to disk, but must remain in physical memory as long as they are allocated.
• Memory Nonpaged Pool Used Allocs - this counter monitors the number of allocations made from the non-paged memory pool. The non-paged memory pool is an area of system memory for objects that cannot be written to disk, but must remain in physical memory as long as they are allocated.

SysGauge Command Line Utility

The SysGauge command line utility, which is available in SysGauge Ultimate and SysGauge Server product versions, provides the ability to monitor the system memory usage and save memory usage monitoring reports from batch files and shell scripts. The command line utility is located in the SysGauge 'bin' directory and it can be used to monitor the local system or remote servers via the network.

In the simplest case, open a command prompt window, go to the SysGauge 'bin' directory and type the following command:

sysgauge -memory_monitor -save_pdf_report <File Name or Directory>

This command will perform a memory usage monitoring operation using a number of memory monitoring counters including the memory usage, the amount of free memory, the amount of used memory, the size of the memory cache, the peak size of the memory cache, the memory cache fault rate, the memory page file usage, the memory page file peak size and the memory page file fault rate. In addition, after the monitoring operation will be completed, SysGauge will save a PDF memory usage monitoring report to the specified file or directory.

Command Line Options:

-host <Remote Host Name or IP address>

This option allows one to monitor the memory usage in remote servers via the network.

-time <Monitoring Time in Seconds>

This command line option sets the maximum monitoring time.

-silent

This command line option enables silent operation, which is useful when saving reports.

-save_html_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves an HTML memory monitoring report.

-save_pdf_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves a PDF memory monitoring report.

-save_excel_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves an Excel memory monitoring report.

-save_text_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves a text memory monitoring report.

-save_csv_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves a CSV memory monitoring report.

-save_xml_report <File Name or Directory>

This command line option saves an XML memory monitoring report.

-save_to_database <Table Name>

This command line option saves monitoring results to the specified SQL database table.