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prometheus

prometheus.exporter.windows

Open source

prometheus.exporter.windows

The prometheus.exporter.windows component embeds windows_exporter which exposes a wide variety of hardware and OS metrics for Windows-based systems.

The windows_exporter itself comprises various collectors, which you can enable and disable as needed. For more information on collectors, refer to the collectors-list section.

Note
The blacklist and whitelist configuration arguments arguments are available for backwards compatibility but are deprecated. The include and exclude arguments are preferred going forward.

Usage

prometheus.exporter.windows "LABEL" {
}

Arguments

The following arguments can be used to configure the exporter’s behavior. All arguments are optional. Omitted fields take their default values.

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enabled_collectors`	`list(string)`	List of collectors to enable.	`["cpu","cs","logical_disk","net","os","service","system"]`	no

enabled_collectors defines a hand-picked list of enabled-by-default collectors. If set, anything not provided in that list is disabled by default. Refer to the Collectors list for the default set.

Blocks

The following blocks are supported inside the definition of prometheus.exporter.windows to configure collector-specific options:

Hierarchy	Name	Description	Required
dfsr	dfsr	Configures the dfsr collector.	no
exchange	exchange	Configures the exchange collector.	no
iis	iis	Configures the iis collector.	no
logical_disk	logical_disk	Configures the logical_disk collector.	no
msmq	msmq	Configures the msmq collector.	no
mssql	mssql	Configures the mssql collector.	no
network	network	Configures the network collector.	no
physical_disk	physical_disk	Configures the physical_disk collector.	no
printer	printer	Configures the printer collector.	no
process	process	Configures the process collector.	no
scheduled_task	scheduled_task	Configures the scheduled_task collector.	no
service	service	Configures the service collector.	no
smb	smb	Configures the smb collector.	no
smb_client	smb_client	Configures the smb_client collector.	no
smtp	smtp	Configures the smtp collector.	no
text_file	text_file	Configures the text_file collector.	no

dfsr block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`source_enabled`	`list(string)`	A list of DFSR Perflib sources to use.	`["connection","folder","volume"]`	no

exchange block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enabled_list`	`list(string)`	A list of collectors to use.	`["ADAccessProcesses", "TransportQueues", "HttpProxy", "ActiveSync", "AvailabilityService", "OutlookWebAccess", "Autodiscover", "WorkloadManagement", "RpcClientAccess", "MapiHttpEmsmdb"]`	no

iis block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`app_exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of applications to ignore.	`"^$"`	no
`app_include`	`string`	Regular expression of applications to report on.	`"^.+$"`	no
`site_exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of sites to ignore.	`"^$"`	no
`site_include`	`string`	Regular expression of sites to report on.	`"^.+$"`	no

User-supplied app_exclude, app_include, site_exclude and site_include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

logical_disk block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of volumes to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of volumes to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

Volume names must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude to be included.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

msmq block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`where_clause`	`string`	WQL ‘where’ clause to use in WMI metrics query.	`""`	no

Specifying enabled_classes is useful to limit the response to the MSMQs you specify, reducing the size of the response.

mssql block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enabled_classes`	`list(string)`	A list of MSSQL WMI classes to use.	`["accessmethods", "availreplica", "bufman", "databases", "dbreplica", "genstats", "locks", "memmgr", "sqlstats", "sqlerrors", "transactions", "waitstats"]`	no

network block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of NIC:s to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of NIC:s to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

NIC names must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude to be included.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

physical_disk block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of physical disk to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of physical disk to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

printer block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of printer to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of printer to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

Printer must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude to be included.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

process block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of processes to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of processes to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

Processes must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude to be included.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

scheduled_task block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of tasks to exclude.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of tasks to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

For a server name to be included, it must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

service block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enable_v2_collector`	`string`	Enable V2 service collector.	`"false"`	no
`use_api`	`string`	Use API calls to collect service data instead of WMI.	`"false"`	no
`where_clause`	`string`	WQL ‘where’ clause to use in WMI metrics query.	`""`	no

The where_clause argument can be used to limit the response to the services you specify, reducing the size of the response. If use_api is enabled, ‘where_clause’ won’t be effective.

The v2 collector can query service states much more efficiently, but can’t provide general service information.

smb block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enabled_list`	`list(string)`	Deprecated (no-op), a list of collectors to use.	`[]`	no

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

ServerShares

For example, enabled_list may be set to ["ServerShares"].

smb_client block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`enabled_list`	`list(string)`	Deprecated (no-op), a list of collectors to use.	`[]`	no

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

ClientShares

For example, enabled_list may be set to "ClientShares".

smtp block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`exclude`	`string`	Regular expression of virtual servers to ignore.	`"^$"`	no
`include`	`string`	Regular expression of virtual servers to include.	`"^.+$"`	no

For a server name to be included, it must match the regular expression specified by include and must not match the regular expression specified by exclude.

User-supplied exclude and include strings will be wrapped in a regular expression.

text_file block

Name	Type	Description	Default	Required
`text_file_directory`	`string`	The directory containing the files to be ingested.	see_below	no

The default value for text_file_directory is relative to the location of the Alloy executable. By default, text_file_directory is set to the textfile_inputs directory in the installation directory of Alloy. For example, if Alloy is installed in C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\, the default will be C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\textfile_inputs.

When text_file_directory is set, only files with the extension .prom inside the specified directory are read.

Note
The .prom files must end with an empty line feed for the component to recognize and read them.

Exported fields

The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components.

Name	Type	Description
`targets`	`list(map(string))`	The targets that can be used to collect exporter metrics.

For example, the targets can either be passed to a discovery.relabel component to rewrite the targets’ label sets or to a prometheus.scrape component that collects the exposed metrics.

The exported targets use the configured in-memory traffic address specified by the run command.

Component health

prometheus.exporter.windows is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration. In those cases, exported fields retain their last healthy values.

Debug information

prometheus.exporter.windows does not expose any component-specific debug information.

Debug metrics

prometheus.exporter.windows does not expose any component-specific debug metrics.

Wrapping of regular expression strings

Some collector blocks such as scheduled_task accept a regular expression as a string argument. prometheus.exporter.windows will prefix some regular expression string arguments with ^(?: and will suffix them with )$. For example, if a user sets an exclude argument to ".*", Alloy will set it to "^(?:.*)$".

To find out if a particular regular expression argument will be wrapped, refer to the collector block documentation.

Note
The wrapping may change the behaviour of your regular expression. For example, the e.* regular expression would normally match both the “service” and “email” strings. However, ^(?:e.*)$ would only match “email”.

Collectors list

The following table lists the available collectors that windows_exporter brings bundled in. Some collectors only work on specific operating systems; enabling a collector that is not supported by the host OS where Alloy is running is a no-op.

Users can choose to enable a subset of collectors to limit the amount of metrics exposed by the prometheus.exporter.windows component, or disable collectors that are expensive to run.

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
dfsr	DFSR metrics
dhcp	DHCP Server
dns	DNS Server
exchange	Exchange metrics
fsrmquota	Microsoft File Server Resource Manager (FSRM) Quotas collector
hyperv	Hyper-V hosts
iis	IIS sites and applications
logical_disk	Logical disks, disk I/O	✓
logon	User logon sessions
memory	Memory usage metrics
mscluster_cluster	MSCluster cluster metrics
mscluster_network	MSCluster network metrics
mscluster_node	MSCluster Node metrics
mscluster_resource	MSCluster Resource metrics
mscluster_resourcegroup	MSCluster ResourceGroup metrics
msmq	MSMQ queues
mssql	SQL Server Performance Objects metrics
netframework_clrexceptions	.NET Framework CLR Exceptions
netframework_clrinterop	.NET Framework Interop Metrics
netframework_clrjit	.NET Framework JIT metrics
netframework_clrloading	.NET Framework CLR Loading metrics
netframework_clrlocksandthreads	.NET Framework locks and metrics threads
netframework_clrmemory	.NET Framework Memory metrics
netframework_clrremoting	.NET Framework Remoting metrics
netframework_clrsecurity	.NET Framework Security Check metrics
net	Network interface I/O	✓
os	OS metrics (memory, processes, users)	✓
physical_disk	Physical disks	✓
printer	Printer metrics
process	Per-process metrics
remote_fx	RemoteFX protocol (RDP) metrics
scheduled_task	Scheduled Tasks metrics
service	Service state metrics	✓
smb	IIS SMTP Server
smb_client	IIS SMTP Server
smtp	IIS SMTP Server
system	System calls	✓
tcp	TCP connections
teradici_pcoip	Teradici PCoIP session metrics
time	Windows Time Service
thermalzone	Thermal information
terminal_services	Terminal services (RDS)
textfile	Read prometheus metrics from a text file
vmware_blast	VMware Blast session metrics
vmware	Performance counters installed by the Vmware Guest agent

Refer to the linked documentation on each collector for more information on reported metrics, configuration settings and usage examples.

Caution
Certain collectors will cause Alloy to crash if those collectors are used and the required infrastructure isn’t installed. These include but aren’t limited to mscluster_*, vmware, nps, dns, msmq, teradici_pcoip, ad, hyperv, and scheduled_task.

Example

This example uses a prometheus.scrape component to collect metrics from prometheus.exporter.windows:

prometheus.exporter.windows "default" { }

// Configure a prometheus.scrape component to collect windows metrics.
prometheus.scrape "example" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.windows.default.targets
  forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.demo.receiver]
}

prometheus.remote_write "demo" {
  endpoint {
    url = PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL

    basic_auth {
      username = USERNAME
      password = PASSWORD
    }
  }
}

Replace the following:

PROMETHEUS_REMOTE_WRITE_URL: The URL of the Prometheus remote_write-compatible server to send metrics to.
USERNAME: The username to use for authentication to the remote_write API.
PASSWORD: The password to use for authentication to the remote_write API.

Compatible components

prometheus.exporter.windows has exports that can be consumed by the following components:

Components that consume Targets

Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.

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