windows_exporter Prometheus Community
winget install --id=Prometheus.WindowsExporter -e A Prometheus exporter for Windows machines.
Windows Exporter is a Prometheus exporter designed to collect system metrics from Windows machines, enabling comprehensive monitoring of performance, resource usage, and services.
Key Features:
- Collects detailed metrics across various components, including CPU, memory, disk I/O, network interfaces, logical disks, processes, services, and more.
- Supports a wide range of collectors for specialized functions, such as Active Directory, DNS Server, IIS, SQL Server, and Windows Update.
- Provides flexibility to enable or disable specific collectors based on monitoring needs.
- Integrates seamlessly with Prometheus monitoring systems, offering robust performance and reliability.
- Can be installed via winget, simplifying setup for users.
Audience & Benefit:
Ideal for DevOps engineers, system administrators, and IT teams managing Windows environments. By providing actionable insights into system health and resource utilization, it helps optimize infrastructure performance, troubleshoot issues proactively, and ensure smooth operation of critical services.
README
config.file# windows_exporter
A Prometheus exporter for Windows machines.
Collectors
| Name | Description | Enabled by default |
|---|---|---|
| ad | Active Directory Domain Services | |
| adcs | Active Directory Certificate Services | |
| adfs | Active Directory Federation Services | |
| cache | Cache metrics | |
| cpu | CPU usage | ✓ |
| cpu_info | CPU Information | |
| cs | "Computer System" metrics (system properties, num cpus/total memory) | |
| container | Container metrics | |
| diskdrive | Diskdrive metrics | |
| dfsr | DFSR metrics | |
| dhcp | DHCP Server | |
| dns | DNS Server | |
| exchange | Exchange metrics | |
| filetime | FileTime metrics | |
| fsrmquota | Microsoft File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) Quotas collector | |
| gpu | GPU metrics | |
| hyperv | Hyper-V hosts | |
| iis | IIS sites and applications | |
| license | Windows license status | |
| logical_disk | Logical disks, disk I/O | ✓ |
| memory | Memory usage metrics | ✓ |
| mscluster | MSCluster metrics | |
| msmq | MSMQ queues | |
| mssql | SQL Server Performance Objects metrics | |
| netframework | .NET Framework metrics | |
| net | Network interface I/O | ✓ |
| os | OS metrics (memory, processes, users) | ✓ |
| pagefile | pagefile metrics | |
| performancecounter | Custom performance counter metrics | |
| physical_disk | physical disk metrics | ✓ |
| printer | Printer metrics | |
| process | Per-process metrics | |
| remote_fx | RemoteFX protocol (RDP) metrics | |
| scheduled_task | Scheduled Tasks metrics | |
| service | Service state metrics | ✓ |
| smb | SMB Server | |
| smbclient | SMB Client | |
| smtp | IIS SMTP Server | |
| system | System calls | ✓ |
| tcp | TCP connections | |
| terminal_services | Terminal services (RDS) | |
| textfile | Read prometheus metrics from a text file | |
| thermalzone | Thermal information | |
| time | Windows Time Service | |
| udp | UDP connections | |
| update | Windows Update Service | |
| vmware | Performance counters installed by the Vmware Guest agent |
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 |
--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] |
--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 |
--log.file | Output file of log messages. One of [stdout, stderr, eventlog, ]NOTE: The MSI installer will add a default argument to the installed service setting this to eventlog | stderr |
Installation
The latest release can be downloaded from the releases page.
All binaries and installation packages are signed with an self-signed certificate. The public key can be found here. Once import into the trusted root certificate store, the binaries and installation packages will be trusted.
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 installer provides a configuration file to customize the exporter.
The configuration file
- is located in the same directory as the exporter executable.
- has the YAML format and is provided with the
--config.fileparameter. - can be used to enable or disable collectors, set collector-specific parameters, and set global parameters.
The following parameters are available:
| Name | Description |
|---|---|
ENABLED_COLLECTORS | As the --collectors.enabled flag, provide a comma-separated list of enabled collectors |
CONFIG_FILE | Use the --config.file flag to specify a config file. If empty, no config file will be set. The special value config.yaml set the path to the config.yaml at install dir |
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 | Use the --collector.textfile.directories flag to specify one or more directories, separated by commas, where the collector should read text files containing metrics |
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. For --collectors.enabled and --config.file, use the specialized properties ENABLED_COLLECTORS and CONFIG_FILE |
ADDLOCAL | Enables features within the windows_exporter installer. Supported values: FirewallException |
REMOVE | Disables features within the windows_exporter installer. Supported values: FirewallException |
APPLICATIONFOLDER | Directory to install windows_exporter. Defaults to C:\Program Files\windows_exporter |
Parameters are sent to the installer via msiexec.
On PowerShell, the --% should be passed before defining properties.
Example invocations:
msiexec /i --% ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,iis LISTEN_PORT=5000
Example service collector with a custom query.
msiexec /i --% ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,service EXTRA_FLAGS="--collectors.exchange.enabled=""ADAccessProcesses"""
Define a config file.
msiexec /i --% CONFIG_FILE="D:\config.yaml"
Alternative install directory
msiexec /i --% ADDLOCAL=FirewallException APPLICATIONFOLDER="F:\Program Files\windows_exporter"
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 --% ADDLOCAL=FirewallException
PowerShell versions 7.3 and above require PSNativeCommandArgumentPassing to be set to Legacy when using --% EXTRA_FLAGS:
$PSNativeCommandArgumentPassing = 'Legacy'
msiexec /i ENABLED_COLLECTORS=os,service --% EXTRA_FLAGS="--collectors.exchange.enabled=""ADAccessProcesses"""
Docker Implementation
The windows_exporter can be run as a Docker container. The Docker image is available on
- Docker Hub:
docker.io/prometheuscommunity/windows-exporter - GitHub Container Registry:
ghcr.io/prometheus-community/windows-exporter - quay.io Registry:
quay.io/prometheuscommunity/windows-exporter
Tags
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
HTTP Endpoints
windows_exporter provides the following HTTP endpoints:
/metrics: Exposes metrics in the Prometheus text format./health: Returns 200 OK when the exporter is running./debug/pprof/: Exposes the pprof endpoints. Only, if--debug.enabledis set.
Examples
Enable only service collector and specify a custom query
.\windows_exporter.exe --collectors.enabled "service" --collector.service.include="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,net,service
collector:
service:
include: 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