How to programmatically log PerformanceCounter

Question

I understand that using Perfmon.msc you can create a custom performance counter and by using counter log, you can write the counter value to a text file.

I also understand I can also use this programmatically by creating a performance counter by using System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounter, and get the counter value using NextValue() method. Is there a programmatical way to tell the PerformanceCounter object to write the log to a text file too (similar to Counter Log in perfmon.msc)?

PerfMon already has the ability to schedule collection of logs to a file in various formats, for an arbitrary set of counters. — Richard, Aug 25 '10 at 08:04

Martin Liversage · Answer 1 · 2010-08-25T07:39:38.233

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In .NET you will have to sample the counter yourself and write the sampled value to a file. However, the Win32 API has functions to do what you want. For an example of the native API see Writing Performance Data to a Log File. You could try to use p/invoke to call the API.

edited Aug 25 '10 at 07:39

answered Aug 25 '10 at 07:32

Martin Liversage

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@Louis Rhys: Only if you use platform invoke (p/invoke) to call the API from managed code or create a managed C++ wrapper around the API. P/invoke is probably easier, but some API's are really hard to call in that way. I havn't tried the PDH API myself. – Martin Liversage Aug 25 '10 at 08:11

Louis Rhys · Accepted Answer · 2011-01-10T05:24:15.760

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Using P/Invoke as suggested by another poster gave too much trouble. I suggest running logman from command line using System.Diagnostics.Process.Start()

edited Jan 10 '11 at 05:24

answered Sep 02 '10 at 08:44

Louis Rhys

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How to programmatically log PerformanceCounter

2 Answers2