windows_exporter/dashboard/README.md

Sample dashboard for Windows Exporter

windows-exporter-dashboard.json is a Grafana dashboard for hosts monitored by windows_exporter. It was originally inspired by this dashboard in Chinese and takes several ideas from Grafana's windows-observ-lib.

Requirements

• Grafana 13 or later with a Prometheus data source. The file uses the v2 dashboard schema, which Grafana needs for tabs.
• windows_exporter with the default collectors (cpu, logical_disk, memory, net, os, physical_disk, service, system). The GPU, Hyper-V and Time tabs need the gpu, hyperv and time collectors, which are not enabled by default. The process names in the GPU tab need the process collector.

Import the JSON file through Dashboards > New > Import and pick the Prometheus data source in the Data source variable.

Variables

Variable	Description
Data source	The Prometheus data source to query.
Job	One or more scrape jobs.
Hostname	Narrows the fleet overview and the instance list to the selected hostnames.
Instance	The host shown in all tabs except Fleet.
Volume	Volumes shown in the Overview and Disk tabs. HarddiskVolume* are hidden.
Network interface	Interfaces shown in the Overview and Network tabs.

The Reboots annotation marks each reboot of the selected host on all graphs.

Tabs

Tab	Content
Fleet	One row per host with OS version, uptime, CPU, memory, commit charge, the fullest volume and stopped automatic services, and graphs of the 25 highest hosts.
Overview	Summary of the selected host: operating system, uptime, CPUs, memory, commit charge, volumes, disk and network throughput.
CPU	Utilization by mode and per core, processor queue length, context switches, interrupts, processes, threads, system calls and the effective CPU frequency.
Memory	Used and available physical memory, commit charge, hard page faults, kernel pools and the system cache.
Disk	Volume size and free space, usage, busy time, throughput, IOPS, latency and queue length.
Network	Throughput, utilization against the link speed, packets, errors and discards per interface.
Services	Running, pending and disabled services, automatic services that are not running, and services that started or stopped in the time range.
GPU	Utilization by engine type, dedicated and shared memory, and the processes that use the GPU most.
Hyper-V	VM count and health, Hyper-V WMI health, host CPU time, CPU and memory per VM, virtual disks, virtual switches and VM network adapters.
Time	Time zone, clock sync source, NTP time sources, clock offset and NTP round-trip delay.
Exporter	Scrape status and duration, exporter version and uptime, collector status, duration, failures and timeouts, and the exporter's CPU, memory, handles and Go runtime.

Click a hostname in the Fleet tab to open that host in the Overview tab.

Changing the dashboard

Don't edit the JSON file by hand. It is generated from Jsonnet with grafonnet as part of the windows_exporter mixin:

• dashboards/windows-exporter.libsonnet defines the tabs, panels and queries.
• lib/dashboard.libsonnet holds the panel and layout helpers.

The generator writes the v2 schema directly, so it needs neither Grafana nor Prometheus. Install the pinned tools and regenerate the file in contrib/mixin:

cd contrib/mixin
make tools
export PATH="$(go env GOPATH)/bin:$PATH"
make dashboard

make dashboard runs jb install to fetch grafonnet into contrib/mixin/vendor and renders the dashboard. make lint fails if the committed JSON file differs from the generated one. Check new or changed queries in Grafana before you open a pull request, for example by importing the file into a local Grafana 13.