PowerShell Version Two – Get Continuous Perf Counters

BuckWoody — Thu, 25 Feb 2010 14:32:52 GMT

In version 2.0 of PowerShell, you can now use a direct command-let (get-Counter) to get at the Performance Monitor counters. For instance, to show the current value of the Processor Percent Time, use this command:

Get-Counter '\Processor(*)\% Processor Time'

The interesting part of get-Counter is that you can add a parameter at the end to keep sampling:

Get-Counter '\Processor(*)\% Processor Time' - Continuous

Which is very useful if you’re doing performance troubleshooting like I am this morning. And yes, you can use this to get at SQL Server counters as well – to see the entire set of counters, use this command:

Get-Counter –listSet * | Select-Object -ExpandProperty Paths

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PowerShell Version Two – Get Continuous Perf Counters