If you want to automatically watch for alerts or log data to a log file, you can establish Performance Monitor as an unattended service on the computers you want to monitor. The Performance Monitor service can be set up to start automatically when the computer is started.
The Performance Monitor service, DATALOG.EXE, runs on the computer on which it is started. Alerts are watched locally on that computer, so no data needs to travel across the network. You can also set up logging on any computer running the service, and the log file is usually located on the same computer. The data can remain there until you want to scan the data using Performance Monitor, or move it to another computer when the network is not busy.
There is no direct graphical user interface to the Performance Monitor service. Instead, you control the service using the monitor.exe utility. The activity being monitored is described in a workspace settings file that you create using Performance Monitor. You use monitor.exe to start, stop, and to establish a particular workspace settings file describing the measurement. You can run monitor.exe from a remote computer, so complete control of all your Performance Monitor services is available from any Windows NT computer on the network.
The Performance Monitor service utilities are included on the floppy disk or CD-ROM provided with this book. For more information on running Performance Monitor as a service, see Chapter 8, "Capacity Planning".