Share via

How to sustain your data collector set through a reboot!

This is a special post, from the Microsoft Premier Field Engineers (PFE) Vital Signs Instructors alias…something we felt should be shared.

EDIT 2016: Note that Clint Huffman made a post to do this in logman in a black box recorder stype. I recommend following that too if you need the functionality: Clint's world, party time, excellent

If you had noticed, it’s difficult to sustain a data collector set in Perfmon for 2008 R2 through a reboot, so it automatically starts after the reboot.  Well, here is how to make it work properly.

1. Define a User Defined Data Collector Set in Perfmon. You don’t have to define any schedule for it.

2. Go to Start -> Accessories -> System Tools -> Task Scheduler

3. Browse to Task Scheduler Library -> Microsoft -> Windows –> PLA

clip_image002

4. Enable Hidden Tasks (View ->  Show Hidden Tasks)

5. You should see all your User Defined Data Collector Sets in here.

6. Open your set, go to Triggers and set up “At Startup“ trigger

clip_image004

Hope this helps you with your performance data collection needs!

Special shout out to Martin Vokurek in Prague for developing the details on this!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2003
    Rajneesh, which credentials, do you mean alternate credentials to do the data collector with?

  • Anonymous
    June 21, 2012
    Excellent blog, thanks.

  • Anonymous
    November 27, 2012
    Nice Description. But how i can setup these credential at installation time.

  • Anonymous
    January 01, 2013
    Hi - thanks so much for this info - found this article via Google - THANKS AGAIN!! :)

  • Anonymous
    February 09, 2013
    Brilliantly simple! Thanks Jeff!

  • Anonymous
    April 16, 2013
    Thanks much. Really saved my time.

  • Anonymous
    September 24, 2013
    What about for windows 2012 ?

  • Anonymous
    October 09, 2013
    Brilliant! Thanks

  • Anonymous
    October 22, 2013
    Simple and clear to folow

  • Anonymous
    November 14, 2013
    Thank you for posting this!

  • Anonymous
    February 22, 2014
    Thanks man!!!! It has solved the problems of many people :) Appreciated!!!!!!

  • Anonymous
    April 03, 2014
    It only starts if the current log file is deleted, any way to make it start and continue with the existing log file?

  • Anonymous
    July 02, 2014
    Jeff,
    thank you very much for sharing this important information. Your way how to describe each step is great and helped a lot. thumbs up

    Greetings from Germany.

  • Anonymous
    July 03, 2014
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    November 21, 2014
    Thanks, it was very useful! :-D

  • Anonymous
    January 08, 2015
    Excellent simple tutorial! Keep up the good work.

  • Anonymous
    July 08, 2015
    The comment has been removed

  • Anonymous
    August 11, 2015
    Concise and to the point! Excellent! Thanks!

  • Anonymous
    December 22, 2015
    Its very useful article.

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2016
    Thanks for sharing. Very useful

  • Anonymous
    January 21, 2016
    I'm glad it helps someone out. Thanks for the feedback everyone.

  • Anonymous
    February 19, 2016
    Thanks a lot man

  • Anonymous
    February 24, 2016
    Welcome! Nice to see 5 years later its still helping folks :)

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2016
    Hello Jeff,

    I end up in this blog after trying to search around for the same questions. =)
    Is still help ppl like me after 5 years.

    Could I also trouble to check is there any command in the dos which I can get this setup without going through the GUI?

    I trying to get similar setup via psexec for about close to 50 over servers.
    I tried look at logman and schtasks with no avail.

    Regards,
    Richie

  • Anonymous
    March 02, 2016
    Hey Richie thanks! :)

    Clint Huffman covers this some in the blog post here: http://blogs.technet.com/b/clinth/archive/2014/05/23/how-to-create-a-blackbox-performance-counter-data-collector.aspx

    Also if you haven't looked, check out http://pal.codeplex.com, he has some sample scripts to automate data collection in there somewhere.

  • Anonymous
    November 10, 2016
    If I wanted to use this as a way to track performance on PCs in a ___domain environment. What would be the best way to push it out to the machines with group policy and how would I make sure that if the computer was rebooted it would start tracking again.

    • Anonymous
      November 29, 2016
      Sorry for some reason I'm not getting blog post alerts. You generally don't want perfmon datacollectors for ___domain joined clients, you might want to check some of these talks on image validation and perf analysis:https://docs.com/jeff-stokes/7309/jeffs-presentations

  • Anonymous
    October 08, 2017
    does it work on windos 10???