SQL Server 2008 Administration in Action

Appendix C. Common Performance Monitor counters

There are literally hundreds of counters that could be captured. The capture purpose (for example, troubleshooting or baseline analysis) usually determines which ones are included. Provided here is a list of common counters by category. Each counter is preceded by the object, for example, Processor:%Processor Time indicates the %Processor Time counter in the Processor object. The descriptions for all of these counters can be found in the Performance Monitor tool itself.