How to find out swap space usage on windows

Question

I want to monitore swap space usage on windows 2003 server. If the usage is over 80% for 10 minutes, an alarm will be generated. There are lot of tools for RAM, but how about swap usage? How do I simulate that condition and do the test?

I assumed that you're looking for a programming solution. Otherwise this question would be better asked on serverfault.com — Preet Sangha, Aug 31 '10 at 05:16
@Preet: Actually i am looking for a solution for testing the usage of swap space (i.e., writting a program to dynamically change the usage of it to, say, 60%). Thanks for your answer though. It is useful info. — eric young, Aug 31 '10 at 19:14

score 1 · Answer 1 · edited Aug 15 '22 at 09:06

To force the page file to be used. Start Commiting Memmory. Use the VirtualAlloc api call:

LPVOID WINAPI VirtualAlloc(
  __in_opt  LPVOID lpAddress,
  __in      SIZE_T dwSize,
  __in      DWORD flAllocationType,
  __in      DWORD flProtect
);

and set flAllocationType to MEM_COMMIT (0x1000), this should start memory being used. Once memory is suffcient exhausted, then the page file should be automatically employed. I suspect you'll have to start measuring usage and then determine heuristically as to when %usage you require happens.

To monitor it read the performance counters. The paging file set has a %usage counter you can read. Start here on how to consume them. All you need is to create a windows service that reads the info and then rings the appropriate alarms.

.Net : https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/archive/blogs/bclteam/how-to-read-performance-counters-ryan-byington

C++ : http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373219(v=VS.85).aspx or http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373214(v=VS.85).aspx

score 1 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 31 '10 at 20:52

Use the built-in performance counters. You can fetch them via WMI/Win32_Perf:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa394270%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

or the raw Performance counter/registry interfaces:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/aa373083%28v=VS.85%29.aspx

How to find out swap space usage on windows

2 Answers2