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

Alloy Copy

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

Arguments

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

enabled_collectors defines a hand-picked list of collectors to enable by default. If you set this argument, the component disables any collectors not in the list. Refer to the Collectors list for the default set.

Blocks

You can use the following blocks with prometheus.exporter.windows. Each block only takes effect if you include its corresponding collector in enabled_collectors.

dfsr

dns

exchange

filetime

iis

The component wraps user-supplied app_exclude, app_include, site_exclude, and site_include strings in a regular expression.

logical_disk

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• metrics
• bitlocker_status

The component includes volume names that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

mscluster

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• cluster
• network
• node
• resource
• resourcegroup

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

mssql

net

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• metrics
• nic_info

The component includes NIC names that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

network

The component includes NIC names that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings 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 accepts a YAML string that satisfies the schema in the exporter’s documentation for the performancecounter collector. You can construct this directly in Alloy syntax with raw Alloy syntax strings, but the best way to configure this collector is to use a local.file component.

Alloy Copy

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

# Monitor Memory performance counters
- name: memory
  object: "Memory"
  counters:
    - name: "Cache Faults/sec"
      type: "counter"  # Use 'counter' for cumulative/rate metrics
    - name: "Available Bytes"
      type: "gauge"    # Use 'gauge' for point-in-time values

# Monitor Processor performance counters
- name: processor
  object: "Processor"
  instances: ["_Total"]  # Optional: filter to specific instances
  counters:
    - name: "% Processor Time"
      type: "gauge"
    - name: "Interrupts/sec"
      type: "counter"

physical_disk

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

printer

The component includes printers that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

process

The counter_version may be 0, 1, or 2.

• A value of 1 uses the Windows Process performance counters through the registry API.
• A value of 2 uses the Windows Process V2 performance counters through the Performance Data Helper (PDH) API. These counters are available starting in Windows 11.
• A value of 0 checks if Process V2 counters are available and falls back to Process counters if they aren’t.

The component includes processes that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

The upstream collector warns that enable_iis_worker_process may leak memory. Use with caution.

scheduled_task

The component includes tasks that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

service

The component includes services that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings in a regular expression.

smb

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• ServerShares

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

smb_client

The collectors specified by enabled_list can include the following:

• ClientShares

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

smtp

The component includes server names that match the regular expression specified by include and don’t match the regular expression specified by exclude.

The component wraps user-supplied exclude and include strings 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

By default, directories contains the textfile_inputs directory in the Alloy installation directory. For example, if you install Alloy in C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\, the default is ["C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\textfile_inputs"].

The deprecated text_file_directory attribute accepts a comma-separated string of directories. If you set both text_file_directory and directories, the component combines them into a single list.

For backwards compatibility, you can also use the deprecated text_file block to configure the textfile collector. If you configure both blocks, the component combines the distinct directory values from each.

The component only reads files with the .prom extension inside the specified directories.

text_file (Deprecated: use textfile instead)

This block is deprecated. Use the textfile block instead.

By default, directories contains the textfile_inputs directory in the Alloy installation directory. For example, if you install Alloy in C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\, the default is ["C:\Program Files\GrafanaLabs\Alloy\textfile_inputs"].

The deprecated text_file_directory attribute accepts a comma-separated string of directories. If you set both text_file_directory and directories, the component combines them into a single list.

If you configure both text_file and textfile blocks, the component combines the distinct directory values from each.

The component only reads files with the .prom extension inside the specified directories.

update

Exported fields

Component health

prometheus.exporter.windows reports as unhealthy only when you provide 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 the component wraps a particular regular expression argument, 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. If you enable a collector that the host OS doesn’t support, it has no effect.

You can enable a subset of collectors to limit the amount of metrics that the prometheus.exporter.windows component exposes, 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:

Alloy Copy

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>"
    }
  }
}

The following example shows you how to enable additional collectors and configure them:

Alloy Copy

prometheus.exporter.windows "advanced" {
  // Enable additional collectors beyond the default set
  enabled_collectors = [
    "cpu", "logical_disk", "net", "os", "service", "system",  // defaults
    "dns", "iis", "process", "scheduled_task"                 // additional
  ]

  // Configure DNS collector settings
  dns {
    enabled_list = ["metrics", "wmi_stats"]
  }

  // Configure IIS collector settings
  iis {
    site_include = "^(Default Web Site|Production)$"
    app_exclude  = "^$"
  }

  // Configure process collector settings
  process {
    include = "^(chrome|firefox|notepad).*"
    exclude = "^$"
  }
}

prometheus.scrape "advanced_example" {
  targets    = prometheus.exporter.windows.advanced.targets
  forward_to = [prometheus.remote_write.demo.receiver]
}

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