windows

Windows machine collector

This module will monitor one or more Windows machines, using the windows_exporter.

Requirements

Netdata monitors Windows hosts by utilizing the Prometheus exporter for Windows machines, a native Windows agent running on each host.

To quickly test Netdata directly on a Windows machine, you can use the Netdata MSI installer. The installer runs Netdata in a custom WSL deployment. WSL was not designed for production environments, so we do not recommend using the MSI installer in production.

For production use, you need to install Netdata on one or more nodes running Linux:

• Install the latest Prometheus exporter for Windows on every Windows host you want to monitor, enabling the collectors listed here: msiexec /i "[PATH_TO_MSI]" ENABLED_COLLECTORS=process,ad,adcs,adfs,cpu,dns,memory,mssql,net,os,tcp,logical_disk
• Get the installation commands from Netdata Cloud and install Netdata on one or more Linux nodes.
• Configure each Netdata instance to collect data remotely, from several Windows hosts. Just add one job for each host to windows.conf, as shown in the configuration section.

Automated charts and alerts for your entire Windows infrastructure will be automatically generated. Each Windows host (data collection job) will be identifiable as an "instance" in the Netdata Cloud charts.

Metrics

The module collects metrics from the following collectors:

• cpu
• iis
• memory
• net
• logical_disk
• os
• system
• logon
• tcp
• thermalzone
• process
• service
• mssql
• ad
• adcs
• adfs
• netframework_clrexceptions
• netframework_clrinterop
• netframework_clrjit
• netframework_clrloading
• netframework_clrlocksandthreads
• netframework_clrmemory
• netframework_clrremoting
• exchange
• hyperv

All metrics have a prefix.

Labels per scope:

• global: no labels.
• logical disk: disk.
• network device: nic.
• thermalzone: thermalzone.
• website: website.
• mssql instance: mssql_instance.
• database: mssql_instance, database.
• certificate template: cert_template.
• service: service.
• process: process.
• vm: vm_name.
• vm device: vm_device.
• vm interface: vm_interface.
• vswitch: vswitch.

Configuration

Edit the go.d/windows.conf configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically at /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory
sudo ./edit-config go.d/windows.conf

Needs only url to windows_exporter metrics endpoint. Here is an example for 2 instances:

jobs:
  - name: win_server1
    url: http://203.0.113.10:9182/metrics

  - name: win_server2
    url: http://203.0.113.11:9182/metrics

Hint: Use friendly server names for job names, as these will appear as "instances" in Netdata Cloud charts and on the right side menu of the agent UI charts.

For all available options please see module configuration file.

Virtual Nodes

Netdata’s new virtual nodes functionality allows you to define nodes in configuration files and have them be treated as regular nodes in all the UI, dashboards, tabs, filters etc. For example, you can create a virtual node each for all your Windows machines and monitor them as discrete entities. Virtual nodes can help you simplify your infrastructure monitoring and focus on the individual node that matters.

To define your Windows server a virtual node you need to:

• Define virtual nodes in /etc/netdata/vnodes/vnodes.conf

  - hostname: win_server1
    guid: <value>
  

  Just remember to use a valid guid (On Linux you can use uuidgen command to generate one, on Windows just use the [guid]::NewGuid() command in PowerShell)

• Add the vnode config to the windows monitoring job we created earlier, see higlighted line below:

    jobs:
      - name: win_server1
        vnode: win_server1
        url: http://203.0.113.10:9182/metrics
  

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot issues with the windows collector, run the go.d.plugin with the debug option enabled. The output should give you clues as to why the collector isn't working.

• Navigate to the plugins.d directory, usually at /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/. If that's not the case on your system, open netdata.conf and look for the plugins setting under [directories].

  cd /usr/libexec/netdata/plugins.d/
  

• Switch to the netdata user.

  sudo -u netdata -s
  

• Run the go.d.plugin to debug the collector:

  ./go.d.plugin -d -m windows