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
hyperv	Hyper-V hosts
iis	IIS sites and applications
license	Windows license status
logical_disk	Logical disks, disk I/O	✓
logon	User logon sessions
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
perfdata	Custom perfdata 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
--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
--log.file	Output file of log messages. One of [stdout, stderr, eventlog, <path to log file>] 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.

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.file parameter.
• 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

Parameters are sent to the installer via msiexec. On PowerShell, the --% should be passed before defining properties.

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="--collectors.exchange.enabled=""ADAccessProcesses"""

Define a config file.

msiexec /i <path-to-msi-file> --% CONFIG_FILE="D:\config.yaml"

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> --% ADDLOCAL=FirewallException

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="--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

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.enabled is 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