Set Time limit for Get-process - powershell

Question

Long story short, we are experiencing issues with some of our servers that cause crippling effects on them and I am looking for a way to monitor them, now I have a script that will check the RDP port to make sure that it is open and I am thinking that I want to use get-service and then I will return if it pulled any data or not.
Here is the issue I don't know how to limit the time it will wait for a response before returning false.
[bool](Get-process -ComputerName MYSERVER)

Answer 1

Although I like Ansgars answer with a time-limited job, I think a separate Runspace and async invocation fits this task better.
The major difference here being that a Runspace reuses the in-process thread pool, whereas the PSJob method launches a new process, with the overhead that that entails, such as OS/kernel resources spawning and managing a child process, serializing and deserializing data etc.
Something like this:
function Timeout-Statement {
param(
[scriptblock[]]$ScriptBlock,
[object[]]$ArgumentList,
[int]$Timeout
)
$Runspace = [runspacefactory]::CreateRunspace()
$Runspace.Open()
$PS = [powershell]::Create()
$PS.Runspace = $Runspace
$PS = $PS.AddScript($ScriptBlock)
foreach($Arg in $ArgumentList){
$PS = $PS.AddArgument($Arg)
}
$IAR = $PS.BeginInvoke()
if($IAR.AsyncWaitHandle.WaitOne($Timeout)){
$PS.EndInvoke($IAR)
}
return $false
}
Then use that to do:
$ScriptBlock = {
param($ComputerName)
Get-Process #PSBoundParameters
}
$Timeout = 2500 # 2 and a half seconds (2500 milliseconds)
Timeout-Statement $ScriptBlock -ArgumentList "mycomputer.fqdn" -Timeout $Timeout

Answer 2

You could run your check as a background job:
$sb = { Get-Process -ComputerName $args[0] }
$end = (Get-Date).AddSeconds(5)
$job = Start-Job -ScriptBlock $sb -ArgumentList 'MYSERVER'
do {
Start-Sleep 100
$finished = (Get-Job -Id $job.Id).State -eq 'Completed'
} until ($finished -or (Get-Date) -gt $end)
if (-not $finished) {
Stop-Job -Id $job.Id
}
Receive-Job $job.Id
Remove-Job $job.Id

Answer 3

This is a known issue: https://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell/feedback/details/645165/add-timeout-parameter-to-get-wmiobject
There is a workaround provided Here : https://connect.microsoft.com/PowerShell/feedback/details/645165/add-timeout-parameter-to-get-wmiobject
Function Get-WmiCustom([string]$computername,[string]$namespace,[string]$class,[int]$timeout=15)
{
$ConnectionOptions = new-object System.Management.ConnectionOptions
$EnumerationOptions = new-object System.Management.EnumerationOptions
$timeoutseconds = new-timespan -seconds $timeout
$EnumerationOptions.set_timeout($timeoutseconds)
$assembledpath = "\\" + $computername + "\" + $namespace
#write-host $assembledpath -foregroundcolor yellow
$Scope = new-object System.Management.ManagementScope $assembledpath, $ConnectionOptions
$Scope.Connect()
$querystring = "SELECT * FROM " + $class
#write-host $querystring
$query = new-object System.Management.ObjectQuery $querystring
$searcher = new-object System.Management.ManagementObjectSearcher
$searcher.set_options($EnumerationOptions)
$searcher.Query = $querystring
$searcher.Scope = $Scope
trap { $_ } $result = $searcher.get()
return $result
}
You can call the function like this:
get-wmicustom -class Win32_Process -namespace "root\cimv2" -computername MYSERVER –timeout 1