AFAIK, the working paradigm of Windows Performance Counter is like this:
When various programs run on the Windows, performance data are written to the corresponding counters by the Windows operating system, i.e., the performance counters are just like sinks of performance data. Then later, we could use Performance Monitor (perfmon.exe) to view the data in these counters.
If above understanding is right, I am wondering whether these kinds of data recording itself will ever affect the performance?
And can we read data from a remote computer’s performance counter?
I believe that the answer is:
Yes potentially reading performance counters may in itself have a performance impact, however exactly what that impact is will completely depend on the performance counter implementation. Usually performnace counters are engineered to have an neglible performance impact, and so you should be quite safe.
Yes you can read a remote machines performance counters – simply specify the remote machine name when you add the performance counter in perfmon: