1. A system manager for testing, administering and monitoring, and/or diagnosing problems with a distributed system having a plurality of computing machines, each machine including an event monitoring agent for monitoring for one or more pre-defined events occurring on the machine and/or for collecting usage statistics with respect to the machine, the system manager comprising a data collection module (DCM), a data management module (DMM), a data storing module (DSM), and a user interface module (UIM), the DCM for receiving a request from the DMM describing performance data to be collected from each of one or more of the machines of the system by way of the agent thereof, and based on the request for collecting such performance data from each agent and sending same to the DMM, the DMM for receiving the sent performance data from the DCM and storing the received performance data at the DSM along with metadata corresponding to the request for current and future usage, including monitoring, analyzing and evaluation, the UIM for receiving requests from a user and forwarding same to the DMM, and for formatting data from the DSM and representing the formatted data to the user.