Powershell script to start Ping jobs on the background. Each ping job pings a target IP and streams the result to a separate file in the log folder. Each record in the log file has the date and time prepended, for easy audit.

powershell_ping_host_monitoring.ps1

# Define the list of target IP addresses
$pingTargetIps = "10.20.255.254", "10.20.2.1"
# Define the folder where the log files will be generated
$logFolder = "C:\Users\my_user\ping_logs"

echo "Prearing ping jobs..."
$scriptBlock = {
    param ($ipAddress,$logFolder)
    $ipAddressReplaced = $ipAddress.Replace(".","_")
    # Define a filter to easily add date/time to our ping results
    filter timestamp {"$(Get-Date -Format G): $_"}
    # The log file will be like pingAAA_BBB_CCC_DDD.txt
    ping $ipAddress -n 9999999 | timestamp | Out-File $logFolder\ping$ipAddressReplaced.txt -append
}

# Create an empty array to contain the job names
$jobNameList = [System.Collections.ArrayList]@()

Foreach($ipAddress in $pingTargetIps)
{
    echo "Starting JOB to ping $ipAddress saving to $logFolder"
    $jobName = "ping$ipAddress"
    $jobNameList.add($jobName)
    Start-Job -Name $jobName -ScriptBlock $scriptBlock -ArgumentList $ipAddress,$logFolder | Out-Null
}

while($true)
{
    # Ask user for input in case we need to terminate
    # if the character q is input, the ping jobs are terminated and the script terminates
    $keyInput = Read-Host "Press the key q and enter to quit"

    if ($keyInput -eq "q")
    {
        Foreach($jobName in $jobNameList)
        {
            Stop-Job -Name $jobName
        }
        # End program
        break;
    }
}