Freeware - PerfCollector

PerfCollector is a command line freeware tool (with .NET source) that can monitor performance counters and log values to a text file. It can use either WMI or standard Performance Counters. See a previous blog post on more information about why this tool was developed.

• Freeware - with source included.
• Command line driven - This allows the tool to be scheduled. The PerfCollector tool has no UI. All activity is driven by a config.xml file with errors and logs to text files. Additionally it has a Debug entry in the Config.xml which allows you to see the actions being performed, additionally any errors are dumped into a \Trace\ folder. Program terminates on any exceptions.
• Logs performance counter values to text file - Allows the configuration of Performance Counters and then dumps the values of those counters (only if they have changed) to a log file that can then be parsed using LogParser.
• Different monitor settings - Monitors performance counters via either WMI Events or standard Performance Counters.

Download. VB.NET source is included in download.

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To install:
1. Copy the PerfCollector folder to a location on your harddrive
2. Configure an XML file. See CONFIG.XML for an example
3. Open a command prompt and type 'PerfCollector.exe '
4. Select 'E' (capital e) to stop.

Additionally to run as a Windows Service see the .\InstallAsAService\InstallAsAService.bat batch file which has a script to allow you to install as a service using the SRVANY and INSTSRV resource kit tools (which can be downloaded for free from Microsoft)
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Config file structure

config
counters
counter
... many counter

Below are the attributes of Counters element

• Timer - How often the tool should poll the performance counters, or how often WMI should check for changes. Lower values will impact CPU performance. Timer is in milliseconds. e.g. 5000
• MonitorType - Either 'WMI' for WMI monitoring or 'PerfMon' for PerfMon style montioring.
• Debug - Sets level of verbose logging. True for verbose, false for no debugging.

Below are the attributes of the Counter element

• CategoryName - This is the PerfMon Category name of the Performance Counter.
• CounterCountName - This is the Performance Counter that contains a increasing total counter. e.g. TotalExecutedCalls
• CounterName - This is the Performance Counter that contains the value you are interested in. e.g. "Call Time Last"
• CategoryWMIName - This is the WMI Performance Counter Name. Find this using steps in the previous post. e.g. "Win32_PerfRawData_CustomAppWindows_CustomAppWindows"
• ThresholdMinimum - This is the number at which the Counter must pass before it is logged to a text file. e.g. "1500"

** Legal **
This program is free software; you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any later version.This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License for more details.You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along with this program; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor, Boston, MA 02110-1301, USA.