PowerShell Get-Counter
PowerShell's Get-Counter provides an alternative technique to employing Perfmon. Normally it’s easy to be enthusiastic about PowerShell, but in the case of Get-Counter, I would not attempt to create scripts until I had a working knowledge of Performance Monitoring.
Topics for PowerShell's Get-Counter
- Our Mission
- Example 1: Check Available Memory
- Example 2: Real-life Task For Get-Counter
- Example 3: Get-Counter Process
- Example 4: WMI Alternative to Get-Counter
♣
Our Mission
Success or failure of Get-Counter missions depends on having clear objectives. You need a working knowledge of Performance Monitoring because you need to make sense of strings such as:
"\Memory\Available Bytes"
"\Processor(_total)\% processor time"
"\LogicalDisk(_Total)\% Free Space"
Once you beg, borrow or copy the correct Performance counter, then preceding with Get-Counter is the easy part. However, all is not plain sailing, you need to be able to interpret the data, and probably save to file (Out-File).
Example 1: Check Available Memory
The purpose of this script is to display the memory available on a machine called Win8, the units are Mbytes. Incidentally, I cannot find a counter for Gigabytes.
# Employ PowerShell to measure computer data
Get-Counter -Counter "\Memory\Available MBytes"
Note 1: The value for -Counter contains spaces, thus you need to enclose "\Memory\Available MBytes" in speech marks.
Typical result for Get-Counter
Timestamp CounterSamples
——— ————–
06/06/2013 10:33:32 \\win8\memory\available mbytes :
4332
Research More Performance Counters
This is how I discovered memory, processor and other computer performance counters.
The -ListSet parameter here reminds me of Get-Eventlog's -List, in this instance we can enumerate the processor performance counters.
Clear-Host
Get-Counter -ListSet processor | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Counter
Note 1: You really do need the full parameter name -ListSet. PowerShell has lots of cmdlets that use just -List, but Get-Counter is NOT one of them.
Note 2: Pure -ListSet * returns so many CounterSetNames that is why I filtered the command to display just the processor counters. Also note that -ListSet on its own does not work, furthermore you need that space between -ListSet and the * wildcard.
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Example 2: Real-life Task For Get-Counter
Enough doom and gloom. If I have not put you off, then you must be keen to master Get-Counter, so here is a working example to monitor the processor.
# PowerShell Get-Counter Processor Example
Get-Counter -counter "\processor(_total)\% processor time" -continuous
Example 2a: Configure -SampleInterval Also, Save to File
# PowerShell Get-Counter Processor Example
Get-Counter -counter "\processor(_total)\% processor time" `
-SampleInterval 10 -MaxSamples 5 # | Out-File "C:\logs\processor.ps1"
Note 3: You probably need to adjust C:\logs\processor.ps1 to a valid path on your computer.
Get-Help for Get-Counter
Thanks to parameters – some call them switches – you can modify the commands output to get the result you are looking for. As usual, Get-Help is the key cmdlet.
# Research Get-Counter Parameters
Clear-Host
Get-Help Get-Counter -Full
Note 4: This is how I discovered ListSet. PowerShell's examples show how you can tabulate just the names of the counters thus:
# PowerShell's Get-Counter List Processor Counters
Clear-Host
(Get-Counter -ListSet Processor).Paths
Note 5: The key point is that .Paths is property of Get-Counter -ListSet Processor, a fact I discovered by piping the command into Get-Member.
Example 3: Monitor Process Virtual Bytes
While this is a real-life example to display memory usage of processes, it’s also meant to give you a template which you can alter to suit your project. For example, you could change 'Virtual Bytes' for 'Working Set', or alternatively, you could choose a completely different counter, for example 'Memory' or 'Processor'.
Clear-Host
$Proc = Get-Counter "\Process(*)\Virtual Bytes" -ErrorAction SilentlyContinue
$Proc.CounterSamples | Sort-Object CookedValue -Descending `
| Format-Table InstanceName, CookedValue -auto
Note 5: The key to this is example is 'CookedValue'.
InstanceName CookedValue
———— ———–
_total 13650411520
powershell 949010432
iexplore 673783808
svchost 439242752
winlogon 59584512
dllhost 58359808
system 5033984
smss 4120576
……..
idle 0
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Example 4: WMI Alternative to Get-Counter
This example maybe a step too far, or it may just alert you do a parallel technique, where you employ WmiObject instead of Get-Counter.
This, and similar scripts, will only return data if you are logged on as an administrator.
# PowerShell Performance and WMI
$Disk = Get-WmiObject -class Win32_PerfRawData_PerfDisk_LogicalDisk
$Disk | Get-Member
Note 5: The above little script reveals over 50 disk properties. The main features of these counters are Read or Write, Average or Percentage.
Research Similar PowerShell Counter Cmdlets
# PowerShell Counter Cmdlet Research
Clear-Host
Get-Command -Noun Counter
The above script reveals the sister commands Import-Counter and Export-Counter. While it’s moderately easy to see what these cmdlets do, I have never seen anyone use them in real-life. See more on PowerShell's Get-Counter
Summary of PowerShell Get-Counter Cmdlet
To be frank, as someone who is a minor expert in both PowerShell and performance monitoring I would encourage to seek other methods of achieving your goals before turning to Get-Counter.
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See More Windows PowerShell Examples of Real-life Tasks
• PowerShell Tutorials • PowerShell Examples • IpConfig • Get-Counter • PowerShell NetSh
• Monitor Performance – PowerShell • PowerShell temp • PowerShell Delete Temporary files
• PowerShell WOL (Wake-on-Lan) • Services • Change Computer Description Registry
Please email me if you have a better example script. Also please report any factual mistakes, grammatical errors or broken links, I will be happy to correct the fault.