Windows Monitoring

SkyWalking leverages Prometheus windows_exporter to collect metrics data from the Windows and leverages OpenTelemetry Collector to transfer the metrics to OpenTelemetry receiver and into the Meter System. Windows entity as a Service in OAP and on the Layer: OS_WINDOWS.

Data flow

For OpenTelemetry receiver:

  1. The Prometheus windows_exporter collects metrics data from the VMs.
  2. The OpenTelemetry Collector fetches metrics from windows_exporter via Prometheus Receiver and pushes metrics to the SkyWalking OAP Server via OpenTelemetry gRPC exporter.
  3. The SkyWalking OAP Server parses the expression with MAL to filter/calculate/aggregate and store the results.

Setup

For OpenTelemetry receiver:

  1. Setup Prometheus windows_exporter.
  2. Setup OpenTelemetry Collector . This is an example for OpenTelemetry Collector configuration otel-collector-config.yaml.
  3. Config SkyWalking OpenTelemetry receiver.

Native OpenTelemetry hostmetrics (expanded alternative)

SkyWalking can also receive Windows host and process metrics directly from OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib, without Prometheus windows_exporter.

  1. Install OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib 0.158.0 on the monitored Windows host.
  2. Use the deployable reference configuration otel-collector-hostmetrics-windows.yaml. It includes the Windows Performance Counters required by the existing windows.yaml virtual-memory and system-handle metrics.
  3. Set SW_OAP_GRPC_ADDRESS to the SkyWalking OAP OTLP/gRPC endpoint. Optionally set SW_PROCESS_NAME_REGEX to restrict the process executable names to collect.
  4. Config SkyWalking OpenTelemetry receiver. The default OAP rule set enables both windows and process-hostmetrics-windows.

The configuration normalizes the system.cpu.time state attribute to the existing mode contract and maps native process.handles to process.open_handles. The process pipeline normalizes process identity and pre-aggregates operating-system processes with the same normalized process_name before OTLP export.

Supported Metrics

The OTel hostmetrics column below refers to the complete OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib reference configuration documented above. Most values come from the hostmetrics receiver. Metrics marked with * use Windows Performance Counters in the same Collector configuration where hostmetrics does not expose the required equivalent semantics.

Monitoring Panel Unit Metric Name Description windows_exporter OTel hostmetrics
CPU Usage % meter_win_cpu_total_percentage Total CPU usage across all logical CPUs Yes Yes
CPU Average Used % meter_win_cpu_average_used CPU usage by mode/state Yes Yes
CPU Cores count meter_win_cpu_cores_num Number of logical CPUs — Yes
Normalized CPU Usage % meter_win_cpu_norm_percentage CPU usage normalized by the number of logical CPUs — Yes
CPU Load meter_win_cpu_load1
meter_win_cpu_load5
meter_win_cpu_load15		 CPU load metrics exposed by the Collector hostmetrics load scraper — Yes
Memory RAM Usage MB meter_win_memory_used Total RAM usage Yes Yes
Memory RAM MB meter_win_memory_total
meter_win_memory_available
meter_win_memory_used		 RAM Total / Available / Used Yes Yes
Virtual Memory Usage % meter_win_memory_virtual_memory_percentage Percentage of committed virtual memory in use Yes Yes*
Virtual Memory MB meter_win_memory_virtual_memory_free
meter_win_memory_virtual_memory_total		 Virtual memory Free / Total Yes Yes*
File System Mountpoint Usage % meter_win_filesystem_percentage File-system usage at each volume or mount point — Yes
Disk R/W KB/s meter_win_disk_read
meter_win_disk_written		 Disk read and write throughput Yes Yes
Network Bandwidth Usage KB/s meter_win_network_receive
meter_win_network_transmit		 Network receive and transmit throughput Yes Yes
Allocated Handles count meter_win_filehandles_allocated Current system-wide Windows handle count — Yes*
Pagefile Usage % meter_win_memory_pagefile_percentage Percentage of Windows pagefile in use — Yes
Pagefile MB meter_win_memory_pagefile_free
meter_win_memory_pagefile_total		 Windows pagefile Free / Total — Yes

* The OpenTelemetry path obtains these values through the windowsperfcounters receiver included in otel-collector-hostmetrics-windows.yaml: Memory\\Commit Limit, Memory\\Committed Bytes, and Process(_Total)\\Handle Count. They are transported and processed through the same OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline but are not native hostmetrics scraper metrics.

Customizing

You can customize your own metrics/expression/dashboard panel. The metrics definition and expression rules are found in /config/otel-rules/windows.yaml. The dashboard panel confirmations ship from the SkyWalking Horizon UI bundle (apache/skywalking-horizon-ui); the OAP backend no longer hosts UI dashboard JSONs.