Install and configure Windows Exporter - Managed Service for Prometheus

Windows Exporter exposes Windows system metrics in Prometheus format, allowing Managed Service for Prometheus to scrape and monitor your Windows Elastic Compute Service (ECS) instances. This guide covers installation, configuration, and the ECS tagging required for Service Discovery.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, make sure you have:

A Windows ECS instance with administrator access
Network connectivity between the ECS instance and your Managed Service for Prometheus environment

Step 1: Install Windows Exporter

Log on to your Windows ECS instance as an administrator.
Download the Windows Exporter installation package (windows_exporter-1.22.0-amd64.msi).

Run the installer by using one of these methods: The installer uses the following defaults:

Double-click the .msi file.
Run the following command: ``powershell msiexec /i windows_exporter-1.22.0-amd64.msi ``

Setting	Default value
Installation directory	`C:\Program Files (x86)\windows_exporter`
Listening port	9182
Enabled collectors	cpu, cpu_info, memory, process, tcp, cs, logical_disk, net, os, system, textfile, time

After installation completes, verify that the windows_exporter service appears in the Windows Services console.
Confirm that the exporter is serving metrics: Alternatively, open http://localhost:9182/metrics in a browser. If the exporter is running correctly, you see Prometheus-formatted metrics output.
Note: If you changed the default port, replace 9182 with your configured port number.
```
   curl http://localhost:9182/metrics
```

Step 2: Configure Windows Exporter

You can modify the configuration file to change the listening port or adjust which collectors are used. For more information, see the Windows Exporter documentation.

After you change the configuration, restart the service:

sc stop windows_exporter && sc start windows_exporter

Alternatively, restart the service from the Windows Services console.

Step 3: Tag your ECS instance for Service Discovery

Managed Service for Prometheus uses ECS instance tags for Service Discovery. Add a tag to your Windows ECS instances so that Prometheus can automatically discover and scrape them.

For example, add the tag ecs_os:windows to your Windows ECS instance.

Note: If your Windows ECS instances already share a common tag that distinguishes them from other instances, skip this step and use that existing tag.

Next steps

After you configure Windows Exporter, set up the integration in the Managed Service for Prometheus console to start viewing monitoring data. For detailed instructions, see Monitor a Windows ECS instance.