Checking CPU utilization

One of the best ways to monitor CPU utilization with PowerShell is by querying performance counters. We can also get this information using WMI. In this recipe, you'll learn a few techniques that can be used to monitor CPU utilization using the Get-Counter and Get-WmiObject cmdlets.

How to do it...

1. To get an idea of the current CPU utilization for a server, we can gather data for the Processor(_Total)\% ProcessorTime performance counter:

   Get-Counter "\Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time" -Continuous
   

   This would continuously output the total utilization across each CPU, as shown:

   

2. In addition, we can use the Win32_Processor class and select the LoadPercentage property to determine the utilization for each CPU:

   Get-WmiObject Win32_Processor | select LoadPercentage
   

   Note

   Both Get-Counter and Get-WmiObject support the -ComputerName parameter and can be run against remote machines.

How it works...

The Processor(_Total)\% ProcessorTime performance counter measures the total utilization...