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Retrieving Windows performance data in PowerShell

Taking Precautions

Article from ADMIN 26/2015

By Florian Frommherz

The software market offers numerous solutions for tracking the status of Windows computers. However, if you only need to monitor individual computers outside the domain, you can use PowerShell to collect basic health and performance data.

Basic performance data and health status of Windows computers can be collected and evaluated very easily and conveniently using PowerShell. The scripting language is an ideal candidate both for local and remote machines because it is familiar with a variety of interfaces in different Windows subsystems.

The number of interfaces and connection points increases steadily with each new version of a Microsoft product. For example, Windows performance, process, registry, and network information is easily understood using Windows Management Instrumentation (WMI). Data from Windows server roles and from the operating system's advanced configuration do not pose any obstacles, either.

In this article, I show you how to use PowerShell to access WMI and performance data on local or remote computers, how to find relevant WMI objects, and how to look at the performance of individual computers and check for violations of threshold values. The scripts shown here are intended for Windows installations starting from Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2.

Collecting WMI Object Data

Much of the information available via a computer can be accessed or controlled as objects automatically via the WMI interface. The interface publishes information about the computer, the operating system, and objects, which can be queried in the form of classes and attributes. WMI also can control your computer remotely. Some classes implement methods that can be used to shut down the computer or configure operating system components.

WMI is a good candidate for a general inventory of machine properties because of the extensive amount of data provided. Of course, PowerShell provides the necessary tool to collect the data. To access WMI objects, you use the Get-WMIObject cmdlet with the WMI object to be queried as a parameter (Listing 1).

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