WMI exporter

The node_exporter is ideal for gathering metrics on *NIX based systems, but Windows based systems will require a different exporter. The is where the WMI exporter comes in.

It has a wide range of collectors available and by default it will enable;

  • CPU usage
  • “Computer System” metrics (system properties, num cpus/total memory)
  • Logical disks, disk I/O
  • Network interface I/O
  • OS metrics (memory, processes, users)
  • Service state metrics
  • System calls
  • Read prometheus metrics from a text file

For this example we will make the assumption that the Windows computer has a IP address assigned. In the case for the example below the IP address we will be setting up and connecting to will be ‘10.1.1.99’.

Installing the WMI exporter

From the wmi_exporter releases page, download the appropriate installer for your system.

Run the file (the sequence below illustrates using the amd64 msi and version v0.11.0)

We will be asked for verification;

wmi_exporter verification
wmi_exporter verification

And then the program is configured;

wmi_exporter configuration
wmi_exporter configuration

We also need to let the program make changes to the computer;

wmi_exporter allow changes
wmi_exporter allow changes

We should now have the WMI exporter service running as a service on our Windows computer.

We can test this (on the Windows machine) by entering the local address (http://localhost:9182/metrics) into a web browser (The default port for wmi_exporter is 9182). This should produce a nice long list of metrics something like the following;

# HELP go_gc_duration_seconds A summary of the GC invocation durations.
# TYPE go_gc_duration_seconds summary
go_gc_duration_seconds{quantile="0"} 0
go_gc_duration_seconds{quantile="0.25"} 0
go_gc_duration_seconds{quantile="0.5"} 0
go_gc_duration_seconds{quantile="0.75"} 0.001
go_gc_duration_seconds{quantile="1"} 0.001
go_gc_duration_seconds_sum 0.002
go_gc_duration_seconds_count 8
# HELP go_goroutines Number of goroutines that currently exist.
# TYPE go_goroutines gauge
go_goroutines 13
# HELP go_info Information about the Go environment.
# TYPE go_info gauge
go_info{version="go1.13.3"} 1

Adding adding our Windows exporter to Prometheus

Just as we did with the node_exporter we need to add the IP address of our new metrics source (10.1.1.99) to the Prometheus prometheus.yml file. To do this we can simply add the IP address of our computer that is running the wmi_exporter as a new target with the default port (9182) and we are good to go.

On our Prometheus server;

At the end of the file add the IP address of our new node - targets: ['10.1.1.99:9182'];

scrape_configs:
  # The job name is added as a label `job=<job_name>`
  # to any timeseries scraped from this config.
  - job_name: 'prometheus'

    # metrics_path defaults to '/metrics'
    # scheme defaults to 'http'.

    static_configs:
    - targets: ['localhost:9090']
    - targets: ['10.1.1.109:9100']
    - targets: ['10.1.1.99:9182']

Then we restart Prometheus to load our new configuration;

Now if we return to our Prometheus GUI (http://10.1.1.110:9090/targets) to check which targets we are scraping we can see three targets, including our new node at ‘10.1.1.99:9182’.

New Prometheus Target
New Prometheus Target

Let’s see our new node in Grafana!

Go back to our Grafana GUI at http://10.1.1.110:3000.

Select the create icon which is the plus (‘+’) sign on the left hand side of the screen and then select ‘Import’.

Import Dashboard
Import Dashboard

Here we will follow the same process to import a pre-prepared desktop for Windows host metrics. In the Grafana.com Dashboard box enter the dashboard number 10171.

After going through the process our new dashboard should now be there in all its glory

Import Dashboard 1860
Import Dashboard 1860

At an early stage there probably won’t be much to see, but take a few minutes to explore the additional panels at the bottom of the screen. This is a manifestation of the huge number of metrics that we saw in text form when we tested the scraping of the wmi_exporter installation.

Up next

Custom Exporters