Uncategorized

Throttle PowerShell scripts to not kill CPU or RAM

Having fun deploying gobs of parallel processes when suddenly things start to slow as CPU and RAM are getting clobbered.  I came up with a way to help scripts be a little more polite to clear up the logjam.  Look for the top of loops or iterative processes to inject checking utilization before proceeding.  If thresholds are exceeded, then the script can pause a bit and check back to see if thresholds came down.  Essentially, it’s a call to a function to check utilization and a small loop to hang out in until utilization comes down.   I have CPU and RAM threshold dialed in at 80%.  One can change to suit.

The function:

function highCpuRam {
 $highCpuRam = $false
 $cpuUsed = [int](gwmi win32_processor).LoadPercentage
 $memUsed = [int]((((gwmi win32_OperatingSystem).FreePhysicalMemory) / ((gwmi win32_OperatingSystem).TotalVisibleMemorySize)) * 100)
 if ($cpuUsed -gt 80) {$highCpuRam = $true}
 if ($memUsed -gt 80) {$highCpuRam = $true}
 return $highCpuRam
}

The check:

 do {
 $busy = highCpuRam
 if ($busy) {"Throttling down. CPU/RAM busy."
 Start-Sleep -m 500}
 }
 while ($busy)