eG Monitoring
 

Measures reported by CRMSandboxTest

Microsoft Dynamics CRM 2011 supports the execution of plug-ins and custom workflow activities in an isolated environment. In this isolated environment, also known as a sandbox, a plug-in or custom activity can make use of the full power of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM SDK to access the organization web service. Access to the file system, system event log, certain network protocols, registry, and more is prevented in the sandbox. The sandbox environment can be used as a failover environment to the MSDynamics CRM2011 server environment.

This test monitors the sandbox environment and reports critical statistics of the following:

  • The CPU, memory and handles used by all the worker processes;
  • The number of active organizations;
  • How well the SDK requests are received and executed and how many SDK requests failed during execution?;
  • How well the incoming custom workflow activities are executed?
  • How many worker processes crashed/terminated in the sandbox environment?;

This way, the administrator can clearly understand the performance of the sandbox environment using which he/she can fine-tune the real time MSDynamics CRM2011 server environment.

The measures made by this test are as follows:

Measurement Description Measurement Unit Interpretation
Cpu_usage Indicates the total CPU percentage used by all the worker processes of this Sandbox host. Percent A low value is desired for this measure.
Memory_usage Indicates the amount of memory used by all the worker processes of this Sandbox host. MB  
Handles Indicates the total number of handles that were used by all the worker processes of this Sandbox host. Number  
Active_org Indicates the number of organizations on which the worker process of the Sandbox host is currently active. Number  
Execute_rate Indicates the rate at which the incoming custom workflow activities are executed on this Sandbox host. Executes/sec  
SDK_req_rate Indicates the rate of outgoing SDK requests. Requests/Sec  
SDK_failures Indicates the percentage of outgoing SDK requests that failed. Percent  
Exec_failures Indicates the percentage of custom workflow activities that failed to execute. Percent  
Worker_proc_crash Indicates the percentage of worker processes that crashed in the sandbox environment. Percent  
Worker_proc_Term Indicates the percentage of worker processes that were terminated in the sandbox environment. Percent The worker processes are mainly terminated due to excessive resource usage by the worker processes or there is no response from the worker processes.
Exec_resp_time Indicates the time taken to execute the incoming custom workflow activities. Secs A low value is desired for this measure. A gradual increase in the value of this measure is a cause of concern as this may affect the performance of the Microsoft Dynamics CRM server.
SDK_resp_time Indicates the response time of the outgoing SDK requests. Secs  
Assembly_cache_usage Indicates the percentage of total assembly cache disk space that is in use. Percent The global assembly cache stores assemblies specifically designated to be shared by several applications on the server.
Concur_plugins Indicates the number of plugins that are executing concurrently. Number  
Assembly_cache_hits Indicates the percentage of requests that were served from the assembly cache. Percent A high value is desired for this measure.