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How to sustain your data collector set through a reboot!

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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

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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

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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???