Patent Document ID: 7890473
Application ID: 10973500
Patent Flag: 1

Claim One:
1. A computer-readable storage medium having computer-useable instructions embodied thereon causing a computer to perform a method for evaluating the performance of a computer system, the method comprising: (a) receiving, from a user, an indication of a threshold value for each of two or more performance characteristics of a reporting computer; (b) periodically gathering one or more sets of performance data respectively related to one or more reporting computers on a user selectable time frame of at least seconds, minutes, hours, days, months and years, wherein a set of performance data comprises data related to the two or more performance characteristics; (c) Communicating the one or more sets of performance data to a data structure; and (d) by way of a processor of said computer: (1) determining a subset of the one or more sets of performance data by sampling the one or more sets of performance data according to the respective thresholds for each performance characteristic, the subset comprising an integer count for each performance characteristic, the count determined for each performance characteristic by counting the number of sets of performance data having a value for the performance characteristic that is beyond the respective threshold; (2) determining a total number of the one or more sets of performance data having communicated to said data structure; (3) determining from the subset, a utilization factor for at least one of the one or more performance characteristics associated with each of the one or more computers, wherein the utilization factor is a performance ratio of the count for the performance characteristic divided by a total number of the one or more sets of performance data; (4) without user interaction, automatically repeating steps (a), (b), (c) and (d) to graphically represent the utilization factor to evaluate performance; and (5) generating and presenting a graph of the utilization factors plotted over time to illustrate performance of the computer system wherein the graph of the utilization factors plotted over time provides a user with a trend analysis to forecast at least one resource of the computing system, and wherein the graph includes a trend line to facilitate trend analysis, the trend line forecasting a time when the one or more reporting computers will need one or more additional resources.