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Windows integration for Grafana Cloud

Monitor windows instances using the Grafana Cloud Windows integration. The integration comes pre installed with a dashboard which gives an overview of Windows metrics. The integration also provides a dashboard to monitor Windows event logs using promtail in Grafana agent.

This integration includes 4 useful alerts and 2 pre-built dashboards to help monitor and visualize Windows metrics and logs.

Before you begin

This integration relies on a Grafana Agent instance running in a Windows machine. See the following sections for details.

Install Windows integration for Grafana Cloud

  1. In your Grafana Cloud stack, click Connections in the left-hand menu.
  2. Find Windows and click its tile to open the integration.
  3. Review the prerequisites in the Configuration Details tab and set up Grafana Agent to send Windows metrics and logs to your Grafana Cloud instance.
  4. Click Install to add this integration’s pre-built dashboards and alerts to your Grafana Cloud instance, and you can start monitoring your Windows setup.

Post-install configuration for the Windows integration

This integration is configured to work with the windows_exporter, which is embedded in Grafana Agent.

Enable the integration by adding the provided snippets to your agent configuration file.

This integration supports metrics and logs for Windows. In order to see those signals correlated on the same dashboard, as a single pane of glass, ensure the following:

  • job and agent_hostname labels must match for windows_exporter (integrations) and logs in the Agent configuration file.
  • job label must be set to integrations/windows_exporter (already configured in the snippets).
  • agent_hostname label must be set to a value that uniquely identifies your WIndows Node. It is placed automatically by the config snippets.

The snippets in the next section configures Windows event log scraping for both the Application and System logs.

For a full description of configuration options see how to configure the windows_exporter_config block in the agent documentation.

Configuration snippets for Grafana Agent

Below integrations, insert the following lines and change the URLs according to your environment:

yaml 
  windows_exporter:
    enabled: true
    instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in logs
    relabel_configs:
    - target_label: job
      replacement: 'integrations/windows_exporter' # must match job used in logs

Below logs.configs.scrape_configs, insert the following lines according to your environment.

yaml 
    - job_name: integrations/windows-exporter-application
      windows_events:
        use_incoming_timestamp: true
        bookmark_path: "C:\\Program Files\\Grafana Agent\\bookmarks-app.xml"
        eventlog_name: "Application"
        labels:
          job: integrations/windows_exporter
          instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in windows_exporter
      relabel_configs:
        - source_labels: ['computer']
          target_label: 'agent_hostname'
      pipeline_stages:
        - json:
            expressions:
              source: source
        - labels:
            source:
    - job_name: integrations/windows-exporter-system
      windows_events:
        use_incoming_timestamp: true
        bookmark_path: "C:\\Program Files\\Grafana Agent\\bookmarks-sys.xml"
        eventlog_name: "System"
        labels:
          job: integrations/windows_exporter
          instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in windows_exporter
      relabel_configs:
        - source_labels: ['computer']
          target_label: 'agent_hostname'
      pipeline_stages:
        - json:
            expressions:
              source: source
        - labels:
            source:

The bookmark_path in the configuration provided is set to a file inside the default Grafana Agent installation path in Windows. If you wish to configure a different bookmark path, please update it accordingly.

Full example configuration for Grafana Agent

Refer to the following Grafana Agent configuration for a complete example that contains all the snippets used for the Windows integration. This example also includes metrics that are sent to monitor your Grafana Agent instance.

yaml 
integrations:
  prometheus_remote_write:
  - basic_auth:
      password: <your_prom_pass>
      username: <your_prom_user>
    url: <your_prom_url>
  agent:
    enabled: true
    relabel_configs:
    - action: replace
      source_labels:
      - agent_hostname
      target_label: instance
    - action: replace
      target_label: job
      replacement: "integrations/agent-check"
    metric_relabel_configs:
    - action: keep
      regex: (prometheus_target_.*|prometheus_sd_discovered_targets|agent_build.*|agent_wal_samples_appended_total|process_start_time_seconds)
      source_labels:
      - __name__
  # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `integrations` section.
  # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
  windows_exporter:
    enabled: true
    instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in logs
    relabel_configs:
    - target_label: job
      replacement: 'integrations/windows_exporter' # must match job used in logs
logs:
  configs:
  - clients:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_loki_pass>
        username: <your_loki_user>
      url: <your_loki_url>
    name: integrations
    positions:
      filename: /tmp/positions.yaml
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `logs.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
    - job_name: integrations/windows-exporter-application
      windows_events:
        use_incoming_timestamp: true
        bookmark_path: "C:\\Program Files\\Grafana Agent\\bookmarks-app.xml"
        eventlog_name: "Application"
        labels:
          job: integrations/windows_exporter
          instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in windows_exporter
      relabel_configs:
        - source_labels: ['computer']
          target_label: 'agent_hostname'
      pipeline_stages:
        - json:
            expressions:
              source: source
        - labels:
            source:
    - job_name: integrations/windows-exporter-system
      windows_events:
        use_incoming_timestamp: true
        bookmark_path: "C:\\Program Files\\Grafana Agent\\bookmarks-sys.xml"
        eventlog_name: "System"
        labels:
          job: integrations/windows_exporter
          instance: '<your-instance-name>' # must match instance used in windows_exporter
      relabel_configs:
        - source_labels: ['computer']
          target_label: 'agent_hostname'
      pipeline_stages:
        - json:
            expressions:
              source: source
        - labels:
            source:
metrics:
  configs:
  - name: integrations
    remote_write:
    - basic_auth:
        password: <your_prom_pass>
        username: <your_prom_user>
      url: <your_prom_url>
    scrape_configs:
      # Add here any snippet that belongs to the `metrics.configs.scrape_configs` section.
      # For a correct indentation, paste snippets copied from Grafana Cloud at the beginning of the line.
  global:
    scrape_interval: 60s
  wal_directory: /tmp/grafana-agent-wal

Dashboards

The Windows integration installs the following dashboards in your Grafana Cloud instance to help monitor your system.

  • Windows logs
  • Windows overview

Overview

image

Logs

image

Alerts

The Windows integration includes the following useful alerts:

AlertDescription
WindowsCPUHighWarning: High CPU usage on Windows host.
WindowsMemoryHighCritical: High memory usage on Windows host.
WindowsDiskUsageHighCritical: Disk is almost full on Windows host.
WindowsServiceNotHealthyCritical: Windows service is not healthy.

Metrics

The most important metrics provided by the Windows integration, which are used on the pre-built dashboards and Prometheus alerts, are as follows:

  • windows_cpu_time_total
  • windows_cs_hostname
  • windows_cs_logical_processors
  • windows_cs_physical_memory_bytes
  • windows_iis_current_connections
  • windows_logical_disk_free_bytes
  • windows_logical_disk_read_bytes_total
  • windows_logical_disk_size_bytes
  • windows_logical_disk_write_bytes_total
  • windows_net_bytes_total
  • windows_net_current_bandwidth
  • windows_os_info
  • windows_os_physical_memory_free_bytes
  • windows_service_status
  • windows_system_system_up_time

Changelog

md 
# 0.0.9 - August 2023

* Add regex filter for logs datasource

# 0.0.8 - August 2023

* Updates agent configuration:
    * Separate bookmark path for system and application event logs
* Update instructions to avoid repeat 

# 0.0.7 - August 2023

* New Filter Metrics option for configuring the Grafana Agent, which saves on metrics cost by dropping any metric not used by this integration. Beware that anything custom built using metrics that are not on the snippet will stop working.
* New hostname relabel option, which applies the instance name you write on the text box to the Grafana Agent configuration snippets, making it easier and less error prone to configure this mandatory label.

# 0.0.6 - January 2023

* Add basic alerts

# 0.0.5 - September 2022

* Fix confusing thresholds for C:\ Free space

# 0.0.4 - May 2022

* Add logs support
* Update mixin to latest with logs dashboard
* Update instructions for enabling logs integration

# 0.0.3 - May 2022

* Move mixin to jsonnet-libs
* Update metadata with screenshots
* Update mixin version to latest

# 0.0.2 - October 2021

* Update mixin to latest version:
  - Update queries to use $__rate_interval

# 0.0.1 - May 2021

* Initial release

Cost

By connecting your Windows instance to Grafana Cloud, you might incur charges. To view information on the number of active series that your Grafana Cloud account uses for metrics included in each Cloud tier, see Active series and dpm usage and Cloud tier pricing.

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