How To Monitor CPU and Memory Usage on Windows Server

This guide applies to the following Windows Server editions: 2012, 2012 R2, 2016 and 2019.

A common headache for System Admins is when a Windows Server becomes sluggish, unresponsive or even shuts down itself. This behaviour is often caused by application processes which demand too many resources for a long period of time that the Windows Server cannot accommodate.

In this article we will demonstrate how you can monitor CPU and Memory consumption in real-time and find out which processes consume the most resources.

Real-time CPU and Memory Monitoring

Below we explain the best 3 ways of monitoring the CPU and Memory usage on a Windows Server.

A. Task Manager

1. To access Task Manager, right-click the taskbar and then click Task Manager.
   
2. Click the Processes tab.
   
3. Click the CPU or Memory headers at the top of the table to sort by usage.

The processes consuming more resources are sorted at the top of the list.

B. Resource Monitor (resmon)

The Resource Monitor application is a Windows utility which allows you to monitor resources.

1. To access it, open the Run dialogue, type resmon in the text box and hit Enter.
   
2. To view CPU usage, click the CPU tab.
   
3. Click the Average CPU column to sort by overall CPU usage. If the higher CPU values are not on top, then click the column once more to adjust the sorting from high to low.

C. Process Monitor by SysInternals

Process Monitor is an advanced monitoring tool for Windows that shows real-time file system, Registry and process/thread activity. It combines the features of two legacy Sysinternals utilities; Filemon and Regmon.

1. Open a web browser from within your Windows Server and download Process Monitor.
   
2. Extract the zip archive and double-click the 64-bit or 32-bit executable to run the utility.

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