windows_exporter
A Prometheus exporter for Windows machines.
Collectors
See the linked documentation on each collector for more information on reported metrics, configuration settings and usage examples.
Filtering enabled collectors
The windows_exporter
will expose all metrics from enabled collectors by default. This is the recommended way to collect metrics to avoid errors when comparing metrics of different families.
For advanced use the windows_exporter
can be passed an optional list of collectors to filter metrics. The collect[]
parameter may be used multiple times. In Prometheus configuration you can use this syntax under the scrape config.
params:
collect[]:
- foo
- bar
This can be useful for having different Prometheus servers collect specific metrics from nodes.
Flags
windows_exporter accepts flags to configure certain behaviours. The ones configuring the global behaviour of the exporter are listed below, while collector-specific ones are documented in the respective collector documentation above.
Flag |
Description |
Default value |
--web.listen-address |
host:port for exporter. |
:9182 |
--telemetry.path |
URL path for surfacing collected metrics. |
/metrics |
--telemetry.max-requests |
Maximum number of concurrent requests. 0 to disable. |
5 |
--collectors.enabled |
Comma-separated list of collectors to use. Use [defaults] as a placeholder which gets expanded containing all the collectors enabled by default." |
[defaults] |
--collectors.print |
If true, print available collectors and exit. |
|
--scrape.timeout-margin |
Seconds to subtract from the timeout allowed by the client. Tune to allow for overhead or high loads. |
0.5 |
--web.config.file |
A web config for setting up TLS and Auth |
None |
--config.file |
Using a config file from path or URL |
None |
--config.file.insecure-skip-verify |
Skip TLS when loading config file from URL |
false |
Installation
The latest release can be downloaded from the releases page.
Each release provides a .msi installer. The installer will setup the windows_exporter as a Windows service, as well as create an exception in the Windows Firewall.
If the installer is run without any parameters, the exporter will run with default settings for enabled collectors, ports, etc. The following parameters are available:
Name |
Description |
ENABLED_COLLECTORS |
As the --collectors.enabled flag, provide a comma-separated list of enabled collectors |
LISTEN_ADDR |
The IP address to bind to. Defaults to an empty string. (any local address) |
LISTEN_PORT |
The port to bind to. Defaults to 9182 . |
METRICS_PATH |
The path at which to serve metrics. Defaults to /metrics |
TEXTFILE_DIRS |
As the --collector.textfile.directories flag, provide a directory to read text files with metrics from |
REMOTE_ADDR |
Allows setting comma separated remote IP addresses for the Windows Firewall exception (allow list). Defaults to an empty string (any remote address). |
EXTRA_FLAGS |
Allows passing full CLI flags. Defaults to an empty string. |
ADD_FIREWALL_EXCEPTION |
Setup an firewall exception for windows_exporter. Defaults to yes . |
ENABLE_V1_PERFORMANCE_COUNTERS |
Enables V1 performance counter on modern systems. Defaults to yes . |
Parameters are sent to the installer via msiexec
. Example invocations:
msiexec /i <path-to-msi-file> ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,iis LISTEN_PORT=5000
Example service collector with a custom query.
msiexec /i <path-to-msi-file> ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,service --% EXTRA_FLAGS="--collector.service.services-where ""Name LIKE 'sql%'"""
On some older versions of Windows,
you may need to surround parameter values with double quotes to get the installation command parsing properly:
msiexec /i C:\Users\Administrator\Downloads\windows_exporter.msi ENABLED_COLLECTORS="ad,iis,logon,memory,process,tcp,textfile,thermalzone" TEXTFILE_DIRS="C:\custom_metrics\"
To install the exporter with creating a firewall exception, use the following command:
msiexec /i <path-to-msi-file> ADD_FIREWALL_EXCEPTION=yes
To repair an installation, e.g force re-creating Windows service:
msiexec /fa <path-to-msi-file>
Powershell versions 7.3 and above require PSNativeCommandArgumentPassing to be set to Legacy
when using --% EXTRA_FLAGS
:
$PSNativeCommandArgumentPassing = 'Legacy'
msiexec /i <path-to-msi-file> ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,service --% EXTRA_FLAGS="--collector.service.services-where ""Name LIKE 'sql%'"""
Docker Implementation
The windows_exporter can be run as a Docker container. The Docker image is available on
The Docker image is tagged with the version of the exporter. The latest
tag is also available and points to the latest release.
Additionally, a flavor hostprocess
with -hostprocess
as suffix is based on the https://github.com/microsoft/windows-host-process-containers-base-image
which is designed to run as a Windows host process container. The size of that images is smaller than the default one.
Kubernetes Implementation
See detailed steps to install on Windows Kubernetes here.
Supported versions
windows_exporter
supports Windows Server versions 2016 and later, and desktop Windows version 10 and 11 (21H2 or later).
Windows Server 2012 and 2012R2 are supported as best-effort only, but not guaranteed to work.
Usage
go get -u github.com/prometheus/promu
go get -u github.com/prometheus-community/windows_exporter
cd $env:GOPATH/src/github.com/prometheus-community/windows_exporter
promu build -v
.\windows_exporter.exe
The prometheus metrics will be exposed on localhost:9182
Examples
Enable only service collector and specify a custom query
.\windows_exporter.exe --collectors.enabled "service" --collector.service.services-where "Name='windows_exporter'"
Enable only process collector and specify a custom query
.\windows_exporter.exe --collectors.enabled "process" --collector.process.include="firefox.+"
When there are multiple processes with the same name, WMI represents those after the first instance as process-name#index
. So to get them all, rather than just the first one, the regular expression must use .+
. See process for more information.
Using [defaults] with --collectors.enabled
argument
Using [defaults]
with --collectors.enabled
argument which gets expanded with all default collectors.
.\windows_exporter.exe --collectors.enabled "[defaults],process,container"
This enables the additional process and container collectors on top of the defaults.
Using a configuration file
YAML configuration files can be specified with the --config.file
flag. e.g. .\windows_exporter.exe --config.file=config.yml
. If you are using the absolute path, make sure to quote the path, e.g. .\windows_exporter.exe --config.file="C:\Program Files\windows_exporter\config.yml"
It is also possible to load the configuration from a URL. e.g. .\windows_exporter.exe --config.file="https://example.com/config.yml"
If you need to skip TLS verification, you can use the --config.file.insecure-skip-verify
flag. e.g. .\windows_exporter.exe --config.file="https://example.com/config.yml" --config.file.insecure-skip-verify
collectors:
enabled: cpu,cs,net,service
collector:
service:
services-where: "Name='windows_exporter'"
log:
level: warn
An example configuration file can be found here.
Configuration file notes
Configuration file values can be mixed with CLI flags. E.G.
.\windows_exporter.exe --collectors.enabled=cpu,logon
log:
level: debug
CLI flags enjoy a higher priority over values specified in the configuration file.
License
Under MIT