A mechanism for accessing and processing monitoring data resulting from customized monitoring of system activities. A method of embodiments of the invention includes invoking, via a Command-Line Interface (CLI) shell console, a performance monitor at a host computer system to perform monitoring of activities of a plurality of system components of one or more computer systems. The CLI shell console provides an abstraction layer for interfaces and further provides host performance information via a common interface independent of operating systems, monitoring use-cases, monitoring tools, or programming languages employed at the host computer system. The method further includes accessing monitoring data generated from monitoring of the activities by the performance monitor.