APPARATUS FOR AND METHOD OF AUTOMATIC MONITORING OF COMPUTER PERFORMANCE

The present invention overcomes many of the disadvantages associated with the prior art by providing an automated, real time performance monitoring facility which runs periodically as a background process in a computer system. This invention preferably uses performance data collection sites already present in the hardware of the computer system, microcode and/or operating system software. At a user selectable period of time, a sampling of key performance factors is taken from the performance data collection sites. The performance monitor then analyzes the, sampled results by comparing the collected results against two or more performance threshold levels (such as early warning or actual performance limiters) for each performance criteria. If either an actual or early warning performance limiter is detected, an easy-to-understand color coded informational message is provided to a computer operator identifying subsystems that are performance inhibitors along with suggestions of specific upgrade solutions that will address the identified performance problems.