Logging in PowerShell and Performance Pitfalls

It is not uncommon for IT Pros to incorporate logging into their PowerShell scripts and functions. Often this involves writing content to text files. Depending on the context and scope of your PowerShell logging, a few pitfalls may await you. These aren’t things that are critical to the point where you’ll suffer a failure. But there may be performance issues, again, based on the scope of your work. In this article, I wanted to compare several logging options and explore what things you should remember when building a PowerShell logging solution. I’ll even include a logging function that I’ve had for years and one that I’ve recently updated based on potential problems I’ll cover here. Let’s go.

Content Cmdlets

Since we’re talking about creating text-based log files, you have two cmdlet options. You can use Out-File, which has a parameter to indicate you want to append text. Or you can use Set-Content and/or Add-Content. If you know you will be appending text, Add-Content will still create the file if it doesn’t exist. But there is a subtle distinction between Out-File and the Content cmdlets. A demonstration will make this clear.