Get statistics from Direct Access server(s)

• Context

During this COVID period, your Direct Access servers is a good nice-to-have solution for remoting.
However, there’s a limit on the maximum number of connexions it can handle.
You should keep an eye on this limit and get an idea of the current workload.
You may as well report these figures to your boss.

• Issue

The RemoteAccess module provides a cmdlet to get statistics 🙂

Get-RemoteAccessConnectionStatisticsSummary
Measure-Command {
Get-RemoteAccessConnectionStatisticsSummary
}

As you can see, it’s damn slow. It took about 31 seconds to get the result 😦

• Solution

You can actually use the WMI repository directly to get a result more quickly

$HT = @{
 Namespace = 'root/Microsoft/Windows/RemoteAccess/Server'
 ClassName = 'PS_RemoteAccessAccountingStatisticsSummary'
 MethodName = 'GetByActiveStatistics'
 ErrorAction = 'Stop'
}
(Invoke-CimMethod @HT).cmdletoutput

As you can see it takes a few milliseconds and not seconds to get the result 😎

If you wonder how I found this, here are the steps I followed:

# Identify the module and what type of command
gcm  Get-RemoteAccessConnectionStatisticsSummary
# Check the content of the function
gc Function:\Get-RemoteAccessConnectionStatisticsSummary
# Once you have identified the relevant Namespace
# You can list classes and their methods
gwmi -ns root/Microsoft/Windows/RemoteAccess/Server -List | ogv

# Once you've the Class, you can query the methods:
Get-CimClass -Namespace `
root/Microsoft/Windows/RemoteAccess/Server `
-ClassName PS_RemoteAccessAccountingStatisticsSummary | 
Select -expand CimClassMethods