Configuring Health Analyzer in SharePoint 2013

The SharePoint Health Analyzer is an analysis tool that enables you to check for potential configuration, performance and usage problems. SharePoint Health Analyzer runs predefined health rules against servers in the farm. A health rule runs a test and returns a status that tells you the outcome of the test. If any rule fails, the status is written to the Health Reports list in the Central Administration website and the Windows event log. SharePoint Health Analyzer also creates an alert in the Health Analyzer Reports list on the Review problems and the solutions page in Central Administration.

You can click an alert to view more information about the problem and see the procedure to resolve the problem. You can also open the rule that raised the alert and change its settings. You can edit Health Analyzer Report list items, create custom views, export the list items into Microsoft Office Excel, subscribe to the RSS feed for the list and do many other tasks.  Configuring health rules are presented as configurable list items in four categories: Security, Performance, Configuration and Availability. Use the following procedure to view health rules:

1. On the Central Administration website, click Monitoring
2. On the Monitoring page, under Health Analyzer, click Review rule definitions

Configuring health schedules

A health rule checks for specific conditions that affect performance, configuration and security in your SharePoint Server deployment. A health schedule defines when SharePoint should run the health rule. Health rules are executed by various timer jobs, depending on the schedule, the affected service and the scope of the rule. Use the following procedure to view timer job definitions:

1. On the Central Administration website, click Monitoring.
2. On the Monitoring page, under Timer Jobs, click Review job definitions.

The timer jobs that run health rules all begin with a Health Analysis Job. You can edit the schedule associated with each timer job. For example, you may want to configure daily timer jobs to run at times of low demand. You can also use PowerShell to configure SharePoint timer jobs:

• Use the Get-SPTimerJob cmdlet to retrieve a timer job.
• Use the Set-SPTimerJob cmdlet to set the schedule for a timer job.
• Use the Start-SPTimerJob cmdlet to start a specific timer job.

Logging Usage and Health Data

You can configure SharePoint 2013 to collect a range of information about the usage and health of your deployment. When you first configure a usage and health data collection, SharePoint provisions a Usage and Health Data Collection service application (named WSS_UsageApplication by default) and a logging database (named WSS_Logging by default). The Usage and Health Data Collection service application initially records events pertaining to the criteria you configure in log files in the 15\LOGS folder. The Microsoft SharePoint Foundation Usage Data Import timer job then uses these log files to update the logging database on a periodic basis.

Configuring usage and health data collection

You can configure usage and health data collection using the Central Administration website or Windows PowerShell. Use the following procedure to configure usage and health data collection in Central Administration:

1. On the Central Administration website, click Monitoring.
2. On the Monitoring page, under Reporting, click Configure usage and health data collection
3. On the Configure usage and health data collection page, under Usage Data Collection, select Enable usage data collection.
4. Under Event Selection, select the usage events you want to monitor.
5. Under Health Data Collection, select Enable health data collection and then click OK.

You can use Windows PowerShell for a more fine-grained control over the information you collect and how you collect it. For example, you can use Windows PowerShell cmdlets to specify a new logging database or set a longer retention period for specific information, such as page request events. You can use the following cmdlets to manage usage and health data collection:

• The Set-SPUsageService cmdlet sets parameters for the usage data to be gathered, such as the log file location and the maximum space for log files.
• The Set-SPUsageDefinition cmdlet configures the retention period for the usage logs.
• The Set-SPUsageApplication cmdlet configures the settings for the logging database, such as the database server and the credentials to use.

Viewing usage data and health reports

You can consume the data collected by the Usage and Health Data Collection service application in a variety of ways:

• You can view health reports from the Monitoring section in Central Administration. By default, the View health reports page includes a single report named Slowest Pages.
• You can generate usage reports as Excel workbooks on individual site collections.
• You can create your own reports by querying the logging database, for example by using SQL Server Reporting Services.