Processor Time (CPUprcrProcessorTimePercent)

Displays the percentage of time that a processor is busy executing the threads of a process. Threads are units of work that make up a process. Consistently high numbers (greater than 75%) can indicate performance problems that can slow your system down. Temporary high percentages (spikes) for this parameter are normal. Under the _Total NT_CPU application instance, this parameter shows the total percentage of time that all processors are busy executing threads.

When in the alarm state, this parameter graph displays an annotation (usually denoted by *) that you can click to display the names of the top 10 processes that are using the most CPU resources.

Recommendations

If this parameter is consistently greater than 75%, you should consider taking action to remedy the problem. Some suggestions include:

Reduce the workload of the CPU if possible — Review the processes running on your system:

• Stop unneeded processes.
• Review the processes listed in this parameter's graph annotation. You may find that processor cycles are being consumed by a poorly designed application that is not releasing system resources properly. In this case, you may need to contact the software vendor (or internal programmer) to get an updated version of the application.

Upgrade to a multiprocessor system — If your problem stems from hardware resources, upgrading to a machine with more than one processor might solve the problem.

Research possible hardware issues — There are several possibilities:

• The SYSsysTotalInterruptsPerSec (device interrupts to the processor) parameter's value is greater than the SYSsysSystemCallsPerSec (calls to system service routines) parameter's value, then a hardware device is probably generating excessive interrupts and degrading performance.
• If the SYSsysTotalInterruptsPerSec parameter's value is greater than 1000, an I/O device is probably generating these interrupts.
• You may find that a disk controller that requires a large amount of physical I/O is consuming the processor cycles. In this case, you can install a DMA disk controller to reduce processor utilization.
• If a memory bottleneck exists, the increased paging activity may be taxing the processor and masking what is primarily a memory bottleneck instead of a processor bottleneck. Refer to the following NT_MEMORY parameter topics to help determine if you have a memory bottleneck:  MEMmemAvailableBytes, MEMmemPageFaultsPerSec, and MEMmemPagesPerSec.

Thresholds for alarms and warnings

Consider adjusting these settings to suit the needs of your system. Refer to baselining overview for information about how to determine your system's characteristics and needs.

Default properties