Documentation Grafana Alloy Reference Components prometheus prometheus.exporter.windows

prometheus.exporter.windows

The prometheus.exporter.windows component embeds the 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.

Usage

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prometheus.exporter.windows "<LABEL>" {
}

Arguments

You can use the following arguments with prometheus.exporter.windows:

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

You can use the following blocks with prometheus.exporter.windows:

dfsr

dns

exchange

filetime

iis

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

logical_disk

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• metrics
• bitlocker_status

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

mscluster

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• cluster
• network
• node
• resource
• resouregroup

For example, you can set enabled_list to ["cluster"].

mssql

net

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• metrics
• nic_info

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

network

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

netframework

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• clrexceptions
• clrinterop
• clrjit
• clrloading
• clrlocksandthreads
• clrmemory
• clrremoting
• clrsecurity

For example, you can set enabled_list to ["clrjit"].

performancecounter

The objects field should contain a YAML file as a string that satisfies the schema shown in the exporter’s documentation for the performancecounter collector. While there are ways to construct this directly in Alloy syntax using raw Alloy syntax strings for example, the best way to configure this collector will be using a local.file component.

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local.file "counters" {
  filename = "/etc/alloy/performance_counters.yaml"
}

prometheus.exporter.windows "default" {
  ...

  performancecounter {
    objects = local.file.counters.content
  }
  
  ...
}

The performance_counters.yaml file should be a YAML file that represents an array of objects matching the schema in the documentation, like the example below.

YAML Copy

- name: memory
  object: "Memory"
  counters:
    - name: "Cache Faults/sec"
      type: "counter" # optional

physical_disk

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

printer

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

process

The counter_version may be 0, 1, or 2.

• A value of 1 uses the Windows Process performance counters via the registry API.
• A value of 2 uses the Windows Process V2 performance counters via the pdh API. These are available starting in Windows 11.
• A value of 0 checks to see if Process V2 counters are available, and falls back to Process counters if they are not available.

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

There is a warning in the upstream collector that use of enable_iis_worker_process may leak memory. Use with caution.

scheduled_task

For a task 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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

service

For a service 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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

smb

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• ServerShares

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

smb_client

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• ClientShares

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

smtp

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 are wrapped in a regular expression.

tcp

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• connections_state
• metrics

For example, you can set enabled_list to ["metrics"].

textfile

For backwards compatibility, the textfile collector can also be configured with the deprecated text_file block. If both text_file and textfile are configured, the distinct values from each will be concatenated.

The text_file_directory will be split by , and appended to the list provided in directories if they are both configured. Until the deprecated field is removed, the default value will be left in text_file_directory to ensure backward compatibility.

The default value for directories is relative to the location of the Alloy executable. By default, directories contains the textfile_inputs directory in the installation directory of Alloy. For example, if Alloy is installed in C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\, the default is ["C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\textfile_inputs"].

Only files with the extension .prom inside the specified directories are read.

text_file (Deprecated: use textfile instead)

For backwards compatibility, the textfile collector can also be configured with the deprecated text_file block. If both text_file and textfile are configured, the distinct values from each will be concatenated.

The text_file_directory will be split by , and appended to the list provided in directories if they are both configured. Until the deprecated field is removed, the default value will be left in text_file_directory to ensure backward compatibility.

The default value for directories is relative to the location of the Alloy executable. By default, directories contains the textfile_inputs directory in the installation directory of Alloy. For example, if Alloy is installed in C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\, the default is ["C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\textfile_inputs"].

Only files with the extension .prom inside the specified directories are read.

update

Exported fields

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 doesn’t expose any component-specific debug information.

Debug metrics

prometheus.exporter.windows doesn’t expose any component-specific debug metrics.

Wrap regular expression strings

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

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

Collectors list

The following table lists the available collectors in windows_exporter. Some collectors only work on specific operating systems, enabling a collector that’s 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.

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

Example

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

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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