By: Ben Snaidero
Overview
Although we could run the data collector set as it is configured now there is one issue that we would encounter if we tried to run it a second time and that is the fact that the data file would already exist. This file would have to be manually deleted before we could re-run the collector set. Fortunately, Perfmon does have a way to address this issue. To do this we need to open the "Properties" of the data collector set by right clicking on the name and selecting "Properties".
After the "Properties" window of the data collector set opens we select the "Directory" tab. Here we can see the root directory we configured earlier and in the "Subdirectory name format" box we can add a format string which will create a subdirectory for each run. Shown below, for the collector we created, I've added the date (yyyyMMdd) and serial number (NNNNNN) for the subdirectory name. The full list of format identifiers can be displayed by selecting the ">" to the right of the text box. Once done you can click "OK" and now the collector set can be run multiple times without having to manually remove the previous set of data files.
