Enable or disable performance counters

Abstract

How to enable or disable storing of Sitecore performance counters in Windows Counters or in Azure Application Insights.

To help you analyze performance and troubleshoot issues, Sitecore stores many performance counters. The counters keep track of how many times an item was accessed, the number of operations against the database, the amount of messages sent to the log, and more.

For on-premise installations, performance counters are stored in Windows Counters. For cloud installations, counters are stored in Azure Application Insights.

Important

Storing counters in Azure is not free. By default, for on-premise and Azure deployments for both Core roles and XP Services roles, the performance counters are enabled.

To enable or disable counter storing for one or more roles, you must edit or rename the configuration files depending on the roles and the deployment.

Note

If you are deploying an XP Scaled (XP1) installation, you must repeat the configuration procedure for every role that you want to enable or disable performance counters for.

Configure performance counters for Core roles before installation

Before installation, you can configure performance counters for Core roles deployed on Azure. (You cannot configure performance counters for XP Services roles before installation.)

To configure performance counters for Core roles deployed on Azure:

Go to the azuredeploy.json file.
To disable performance counters, set the storeSitecoreCountersApplicationInsights setting to false.
```
"storeSitecoreCountersInApplicationInsights": {
    "type": "bool",
    "defaultValue": false
}
```

If you want to enable performance counters again and return to the default configuration, set the storeSitecoreCountersApplicationInsights setting to true.

"storeSitecoreCountersInApplicationInsights": {
    "type": "bool",
    "defaultValue": true
}

Configure performance counters for Core roles after installation

After installation, you can configure performance counters for Core roles deployed on-premise and on Azure.

Core roles deployed on-premise

To configure performance counters for Core roles deployed on-premise:

Go to the \App_Config\Sitecore.config file.

To disable the creation of the performance counters file, set the interval setting to 00:00:00.

<agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.CounterDumpAgent" method="Run" interval="00:00:00">
    <DumpFile>$(dataFolder)/diagnostics/counters/counters.{date}.{time}.{processid}.txt</DumpFile>
</agent>

To disable performance counters, set the Counters.Enabled setting to false.
```
<setting name="Counters.Enabled" value="false" />
```

If you want to enable performance counters again and return to the default configuration, set the interval setting to 01:00:00 and the Counters.Enabled setting to true.

<agent type="Sitecore.Tasks.CounterDumpAgent" method="Run" interval="01:00:00">
    <DumpFile>$(dataFolder)/diagnostics/counters/counters.{date}.{time}.{processid}.txt</DumpFile>
</agent>

<setting name="Counters.Enabled" value="true" />

Core roles deployed on Azure

To configure performance counters for Core roles deployed on Azure:

Go to the \App_Config\Sitecore.Cloud.ApplicationInsights.config file.
To disable performance counters, set the Counters.Enabled setting to false.
```
<setting name="Counters.Enabled" value="false" />
```

If you want to enable performance counters again and return to the default configuration, set the Counters.Enabled setting to true.

<setting name="Counters.Enabled" value="true" />

Configure performance counters for XP Services roles after installation

After installation, you can configure performance counters for XP Services roles deployed on-premise and on Azure.

XP Services roles deployed on-premise

To configure performance counters for XP Services roles deployed on-premise:

Go to the \App_Data\Config\Sitecore\CoreServices\ folder.
To disable performance counters, add a .disabled suffix to the sc.PerformanceCounters.WindowsSystem.xml file and remove the .disabled suffix from the sc.PerformanceCounters.DisableCounters.xml file.
Important
Removing the .disabled suffix from both files causes a critical initialization exception to occur, and Sitecore will not start unless you add the .disabled suffix to one of the configuration files.
You must repeat this procedure for all relevant roles.

If you want to enable performance counters again and return to the default configuration, remove the .disabled suffix from the sc.PerformanceCounters.WindowsSystem.xml file. and add a .disabled suffix to the sc.PerformanceCounters.DisableCounters.xml file.

XP Services roles deployed on Azure

To configure performance counters for XP Services roles deployed on Azure:

Go to the \App_Data\Config\Sitecore\CoreServices\ folder.
To disable performance counters, add a .disabled suffix to the sc.PerformanceCounters.AppInsights.xml file and remove the .disabled suffix from the sc.PerformanceCounters.DisableCounters.xml file.
Important
Removing the .disabled suffix from both files causes a critical initialization exception to occur, and Sitecore will not start unless you add the .disabled suffix to one of the configuration files.
You must repeat this procedure for all relevant roles.

If you want to enable performance counters again and return to the default configuration, remove the .disabled suffix from the sc.PerformanceCounters.AppInsights.xml file and add a .disabled suffix to the sc.PerformanceCounters.DisableCounters.xml file.