Question

I have a basic script that I want to improve so it goes off and collects perfmon counters as Jobs instead of what I am currently doing (which is centrally retrieving counters).

The problem is, when I run Get-Counter in a Job in Powershell, the data that comes back can’t be inspected/used properly. I think it’s because it serializes the data.

This is my script, pretty basic:

Start-Job -ScriptBlock {$Counter = Get-Counter "\LogicalDisk(C:)\% Free Space" -MaxSamples 1 -SampleInterval 1 ; return $Counter}

do
{
    [array]$JobCount = Get-Job -State "Completed"
    $JobResults = Get-Job | Receive-Job

    if ($JobCount.Count -gt 0)
    {
        Write-Host "Job Completed"
    }
    else
    {
        Write-Host "Sleeping 1 Second..."
        Start-Sleep 1
    }
}
while ($JobCount.Count -lt 0)

$JobResults.CounterSamples

$JobResults.CounterSamples returns a string which says “Microsoft.PowerShell.Commands.GetCounter.PerformanceCounterSample”. That is the data type of the counter objects.

If I run this outside of a job it returns just fine:

$Counter = Get-Counter "\LogicalDisk(C:)\% Free Space" -MaxSamples 1 -SampleInterval 1
$Counter.CounterSamples

Anyone know how I can use the data within the Job results properly?

Still not had the answer I am looking for on this, any ideas people?

Answer 1

I found a way around this myself, and it was basically to process the Countersamples in the job itself rather than try to pass the results back for processing:

$ScriptBlock = {

    param
    (
        $Server,
        $ExportCSV
    )

    $Counter = Get-Counter -ComputerName $Server "LogicalDisk(C:)\% Free Space" -MaxSamples 10 -SampleInterval 2
    $CounterSamples = $Counter | % {$_.CounterSamples}

    $MasterArray = @()
    foreach ($CounterSample in $CounterSamples)
    {
        $TempArray = @()
        $TempArray = "" | Select Server, ObjectName, CounterName, InstanceName, Value, DateTime

        $Split = $CounterSample.Path.Remove(0,2)
        $Split = $Split.Split("\")

        $TempArray.Server = $Split[0]
        $TempArray.ObjectName = $Split[1].Split("(")[0]
        $TempArray.CounterName = $Split[2]
        $TempArray.InstanceName = $CounterSample.InstanceName
        $TempArray.Value = $CounterSample.CookedValue
        $TempArray.DateTime = $CounterSample.TimeStamp.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss")

        $MasterArray += $TempArray
    }

    $MasterArray | Export-Csv $ExportCSV -NoType
}

$Servers = "CHRIS-PC"

foreach ($Server in $Servers)
{
    $ExportCSVFile = "C:\Temp\$Server" + "_Samples.csv"
    Start-Job -ScriptBlock $ScriptBlock -ArgumentList @($Server, $ExportCSVFile)
}