Performance monitoring will let you know when values are outside an acceptable range right now, but for a full understanding of the situation, some background and history is a big help.
Analysis Capability
Knowing that, for example, CPU utilisation is currently at 80% is useful, but only part of the picture. Is it a short spike, or are there some serious capacity problems?
Built-in tools such as Task Manager and Performance Monitor provide a very limited historical analysis capability.
Current And Historic Data
ServerAssist's performance data processing does much more. Detailed data can be captured at any interval, and can cover days, weeks or even months, with summarised historical data going back years. Sophisticated smoothing lets you see the underlying trends, and you can "zoom in" to particular areas of interest to any level of granularity.
Revist Previous Analyses
It can take some time to set up the details needed for a precise analysis pf a problem, so to speed up an analysis the second time, all settings can be saved and re-loaded when required.
Usage Scenario
For example, you might collect CPU utilisation and network traffic data for a week, at 10 second intervals, and then display a chart for the whole week.
If an abnormal load profile is identified, you could drill down to plot detailed data for a half-hour period of specific interest.
This not only lets you put the current issue into context, but also allows correlation with other events, letting you see patterns and connections that might not be immediately obvious.
is this just a one-off problem, or is there a pattern?