Applies to: Windows 7+, Windows Server 2008 R2+
Target audience: People I support primarily. Anyone who wants to perf like a pro?

Why

There may come a time where you need to import an xml file given to you by a support person into Perfmon. This is so precise, targeted data captures can be made of the impacted system, or sometimes to baseline a system to know what good looks like.

What

The xml file is a template that defines the performance metrics to capture and also sometimes time intervals, file format for the results file, etc.

How

Step 1: Open Perfmon (start/perfmon or computer management/performance)

Step 2: Expand Performance and go to Data Collector Sets then User Defined.

Step 3:  Right Click the User Defined folder then select New > Data Collector Set.

Step 4: Give it a name and leave the “Create from a template” selected. Click Next.

Step 5: Click Browse and then select this file.

Step 6: Click through the wizard (next/next) and then select the top radio button “Open properties for this data collector set“.

Step 7: If you want to tweak anything about this collection, now is the time to do it. Most of the configuration has been done for you though. 200 MB rolling logs created in sequence with host name in the file name. This collects at a 1 second interval, to preserve space you can adjust to 5 or 10 seconds if you like. You do this by right clicking “Pal System Overview” under your data collector.

 

 

 

 

 

And then modifying the field you want to modify (in this example, Seconds)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Step 7: Once you are happy with the configuration, right click your data collector set and select Start.

 

Note this does not sustain through a restart/crash of Windows. To do that you need to follow this article: https://blogs.technet.microsoft.com/jeff_stokes/2011/11/16/how-to-sustain-your-data-collector-set-through-a-reboot/