The Windows Exporter is a service that collects system, performance, and hardware metrics from Windows servers and exposes them via a text-based HTTP endpoint for Prometheus to scrape. It functions as a system metrics collector and service monitor designed to provide observability across Windows environments.
The project utilizes a modular collector design that gathers data through Windows Management Instrumentation, native performance counters, and registry keys. It also includes a text-file metrics importer that allows user-defined or third-party business metrics to be read from local plain-text files and included in the exported stream.
The exporter tracks the health and performance of background processes, software installations, and specialized server roles such as directory services and naming systems. It supports deployment within containerized environments to standardize monitoring across various operating system nodes.
System and collector behaviors are managed through command-line arguments and configuration files.
