I just started monitoring an Exchange server (SBS 2003) using Zabbix yesterday, and during the night I received several alerts for the Memory Pages per Second indicator acting bursty and jerky:
Link to the full size image: http://i.imgur.com/uAbXz.png
The peek was 3000 pages/sec. I don't know that that Memory Pages/Sec metric means, but Zabbix has triggered an alert for each peek you seeon the image. The trigger is set to if >20 pages/sec, throw an alert.
The problem is not Zabbix here, but Exchange and I would like to know if this is normal, and what could be the source of these jerky bursts.
I can provide some more performance graphs of the server if you wish.
Best Answer
Without a more in depth analysis, almost anything could be causing those spikes. In general, spikes in any performance counter aren't neccessarily an indication of a real problem. The key is to monitor the server over time to analyze the frequency and duration of the spikes in that counter along with other related performance counters that may indicate a real problem.
Memory Pages/sec is a counter that measures the rate at which pages are read from or written to disk to resolve hard page faults. Since these are ocurring during the night, my guess is that they're related to:
A backup of the Exchange server
The mailbox management process
Database maintenance
You should check all three of these and determine if the spikes coincide with any of these activities.
In addition, I would recommend reading this:
http://www.microsoft.com/download/en/details.aspx?displaylang=en&id=19125
And downloading, installing, and running the Exchange BPA and TRA:
http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/exchange/bb288481.aspx