Creating & Editing performance counters in a powershell script or command line

Question

I'm trying to move the verification & creation of my performance counter groups, and the counters themselves, out of my web service and into a powershell script that's run during deployment.

Can this be done? Or am I stuck using a simple app to build the groups & counters?

Thanks much :)

Answer 1

Figured this out a while ago, but never posted.
Here's my solution:

//save out the type name for sanity's sake
$ccdTypeName = 'System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationData'
$CounterCollection = New-Object System.Diagnostics.CounterCreationDataCollection

//create as many counters as we'd like, and add them to the collection. here's just one:
$CounterCollection.Add( (New-Object $ccdTypeName "Counter Name", "Counter Description", NumberOfItems32) )

//create the category with the counter collection
[System.Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategory]::Create($perfCounterCategoryName, $perfCounterVersion, [Diagnostics.PerformanceCounterCategoryType]::SingleInstance, $CounterCollection);