Are performance counters the best way to implement and average per second count?

I want to include some sort of performance counts in my application. Are Windows Performance counters开发者_StackOverflow (Perfmon) counters the best way to go. I am just worried that maybe it is too much overhead for what am I wanting which is just a simple average per second count. Is it better to just roll my own?

Yes, Perfmon works quite well.
To minimize any overhead, run Perfmon on a remote machine.
I've used Perfmon to collect serious, in-depth, and valuable performance data on a BizTalk server from a development machine on the same network and every part of the process worked very well. I wouldn't even consider any other method of collecting the same kind of performance data without very strong evidence.

No, performance counters are sloppy and should not be used for 'critical' counters. On high utilized systems performance counters can be updated very slowly and can even be incorrect.