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Install Windows Exporter

windows_exporter is the program that is designed to monitor Windows host system by retrieving the system metrics of the operating system(cpu usage, memory, disk I/O usage, etc.).

Note

This documentation describes one example of the windows_exporter installation. For other possibilities consult windows_exporter Github page.

Requirements

To complete this guide you will need:

  • administrator access on Windows machine
  • connection to the VM on which you want to install the windows_exporter
  • the security group should contain the following ports:
    • inbound rules: ssh (22), http (80), icmp (all), rdp (3389), tcp (9182)
    • outbound rules: all

Set up windows_exporter

Download & install windows_exporter package

We recommended to install the latest windows_exporter version. This example installs windows_exporter v0.16.0 as it is the latest version available at the time of writing the documentation.

Download the latest package on GitHub.

  • Ensure the version is the one you've downloaded:
wmic
product windows_exporter get version

Run windows_exporter

Once downloaded, simply click on the executable file and start running the installer. After installation, windows_exporter should be in 'running' state in Services Windows app.

To verify it, head over to the Services panel of Windows (by typing Services in the Windows search menu). In the Services panel, search for the windows_exporter entry in the list and make sure that your service is running properly.

Warning

windows_exporter is exposing metrics on port 9182. Please make sure that the above requirements are fulfilled.

Observing Windows host metrics

Now that your exporter is running, it should start exposing metrics on: 

http://localhost:9182/metrics

Open your web browser (on your VM) and navigate to the windows_exporter url. This is what you should see in your web browser:

Some metrics are very generic and exported by all exporters, and some others are very specific to your Windows host (like windows_cpu_core_frequency_mhz metric for example).

When windows_exporter is installed and configured, you can bind Prometheus to scrape metrics from the VM.