Server network adapter bandwith utilization

[Grypht]

I'm looking for a program that will tell me what is the current bandwith utilization (%) on the network adapter.

With the performance monitor included in Windows, I can see my current bandwith, but it does not tell me how busy the adapter is (if I put the bytes/total and packets /sec it's not on the same scale)

I think I already heard that if the bandwith utilisation is higher then 40% it's a high level of usage.

This is a file server, and I want to know if it would be able to be our antivirus update server also or if it's already used at it's limit.

I did check the programs at:

http://www.snapfiles.com/Freeware/network/fwnetmoni.html

but none of them really looked like they could show me what I want.

Any help would be welcome.
Thanks

 

[rn4it]

We use Orion from Solarwinds,

http://www.solarwinds.net

which is for constant monitoring of network devices. They also have an engineers edition which is more portable. I've also used ptrg for short term monitoring it worked well.

You mentioned 40% utilization, if the server is running 100Full Duplex and is between 50-60% utilization and it is constant and there is no more or very minimal growth expected then that's fine. You want to fine that balance point between an under utilized port and an over utilized port. It's always better to know what the ports utiliztation is rather then speculate. I've had alot of DBA's AS400 operators and Manager's state they need more bandwidth because such and such an application. We then test it we found that even through we were adding a large snapshot to the SQL DB it was only utilizing 1% of a gige connection. This was due to limitations on the number of inseterts SQL Server could handle.

good luck

 

[Grypht]

Our server is on a 1gig connection,

I'll check out the programs at Solarwinds to monitor the network connection. It seems like we get tons of information in there, I'm a bit afraid I won't be able to find the information I'm looking for in there.

1 more thing I need to find on that server is: why the backups are so slow. I understand that it's a busy server and it has to copy tons of files, but 250gig of data shouldn't take 24h to backup over a 1gbps connection. So far I'm suspecting it's a transfer issue, since the backup of other servers to the same device takes 2-3hours for the same amount of data.

I used the Ixia software named Q-check to test the bandwith between the 2 servers and it tells me that it's going at 360mbps or so.

So, thanks for the advice, I'll check it out

 

[CiscoRC]

You might want to check out the Bandwidth Meter Pro. That's a good program to get a full scale speed chart of your transfer.

http://www.bandwidth-meter.net/

It's not just internet Bandwidth, it can detect the Bandwidth from with your internal network, i.e. File Transfer.

 

[Grypht]

Thanks,

I'll check this out also