How To Use Windows Performance Analyzer

WHAT IS WIINDOWS PERFORMANCE ANALYZER?

What is the windows Performance Analyzer tool?

Windows Performance Analyzer (WPA) is a tool that creates graphs and data tables of Event Tracing for Windows (ETW) events that are recorded by Windows Performance Recorder (WPR) or Xperf. WPA can open any event trace log (ETL) file for analysis.

HOW TO SET UP WINDOWS PERFORMANCE ANALYZER

Here’s How:

Download the Windows ADK from Microsoft for your VERSION OF WINDOWS 10.

 Download
2 Run the downloaded adksetup.exe file.

3 If you already have Windows ADK installed, select (dot) Change, click/tap on Continue, and go to step 7. (see screenshot below)

4 Select where you want to install the Windows Assessment and Deployment Kit (Windows ADK),

How to install the Windows ADK offline | Microsoft Docs

5 Select Yes (default) or No to send anonymous data to Microsoft for the Windows 10 Kits, and click/tap on Next. (see screenshot below)

6 Click/tap on Accept for the license agreement. (see screenshot below)

7 Select (check) Windows Performance Toolkit to install, and click/tap on Install or Change.

8 If prompted by UAC click/tap on Yes to approve.

9 The Windows Performance Toolkit will now start to be installed.

10 When finished installing, click/tap on Close. (see screenshot below)

11 You will now see Windows Performance RecorderGPUView, and Windows Performance Analyzer from the Windows Performance Toolkit listed in your Start menu.

That’s it,

How to use Windows Performance Recorder:

1.      On the Start screen, click Windows Performance Recorder or from start menu search box execute command WPRUi. This will open the following window.

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2.      To gather CPU and memory related information, select “CPU usage”, “Heap usage” , and “VirtualAlloc usage”  from the Resource Analysis options. Keep “First level triage” selected from First level triage section.

3.      Set Performance scenario: “General”, Detail level: “Verbose” and Logging mode: “File” as shown in the image below.

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4.      Stop other bulky applications such as web browsers etc which you do not need, otherwise, those applications will also be tracked by WPR.

5.      Now, click on “Start” button to start the recording.

6.      Then start your application server / exe for which you want to do performance and memory leak analysis.

7.      Click on the “Save” button to stop the recording. This will launch a new save file dialog. Save your recording to the location you want.

Steps to use the Performance Analyzer tool.

Let us walk through the steps of how we can use the Performance analyzer tool to analyze the performance of Power BI reports.

In Performance Analyzer, we can identify how the report elements, such as visuals and DAX formulas, are performing. We can see and record logs that measure how each of your report elements performs when users interact with them in MS (milliseconds).

Duration (MS) = the difference between a start and end timestamp for each operation.

Now, let’s deep dive into how the Performance Analyzer tool works.

Remember, this feature is available on Power BI Desktop only

Let’s get started.

1.Open your Report (pbix file).

2.Select the View In the Show area of the View ribbon, you can select the checkbox next to Performance Analyzer to display the Performance Analyzer pane.

View Ribbon

Once we click on Performance Analyzer, the below image pane will appear.

3. Click on ‘Start recording’.  Clicking on “Start recording” this will be in running mode.

Performance Analyzer
Performance Analyzer Filters

4. Start doing your operations on the report where you are facing issues and all other required areas to check for report performance.

Keep in mind, any actions you take in the report are displayed and logged in the Performance Analyzer pane.

So, each time you click on a visual, move a slicer, or interact in any other way, Performance Analyzer immediately displays the performance results in its pane.

Performance Analyzer List

5) Once you are done with the report element review you can select the Stop button which is now enabled.

Performance Analyzer Visuals

6) Now all recorded information can be viewed directly in the pane or you can export it in JSON format.

Performance Analyzer JSON Format

Recording Analysis

Performance Analyzer recording analysis will be done on the following categories:

  • DAX query– If a DAX query is required, this is the time between the visual sending the query, and for Analysis Services to return the results.
  • Visual display– Time required for the visual to draw on the screen, including time required to retrieve any web images or geocoding.
  • Other– time required by the visual for preparing queries, waiting for other visuals to complete, or performing other background processing.

You can identify the duration (in milliseconds ) for each element.

Recording Analysis
Recording Analysis

Final Thoughts

The Performance Analyzer feature is the perfect tool to use if you have slow models. We have put together all the steps you need to follow within Performance Analyzer to boost the performance of your BI models and reports.

If you face any difficulties or issues with controlling the performance of your BI reports, feel free to get in

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