Windows Performance Counters receiver 🔗

The Windows Performance Counters receiver allows the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to collect configured system, application, or custom performance counter data from the Windows Registry. The supported pipeline types are metrics. See Process your data with pipelines for more information.

Configured metrics consist of a metric description, including unit and type, used by one or more performance counters scraped by the receiver. If a specific performance counter can’t be accessed at startup, the receiver emits a warning and continues execution.

The Windows Performance Counters receiver replaces the SmartAgent monitor type of the same name. See Windows Performance Counters for information on the monitor type.

Note

The Windows Performance Counters receiver only works on Windows hosts.

Get started 🔗

Follow these steps to configure and activate the component:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
Configure the Windows Performance Counters receiver as described in the next section.
Restart the Collector.

View available performance counters 🔗

To see a list of available performance counters, use Windows PowerShell or the Windows Performance Monitor.

In PowerShell, run the following command to list all performance counter sets:

Get-Counter -ListSet *

To list the instances of each performance counter set, run the following command and replace <perf_object_name> with the name of the instances you want to find:

Get-Counter -List "<perf_object_name>"

Run the following command to open the Windows Performance Monitor:

perfmon /sys

In the Windows Performance Monitor, select the green plus arrow to see a list of available performance counters.

The Add Counters screen of the Windows Performance Monitor displays a list of available Windows Performance Counters and a list of counters added to the performance monitor.

Sample configurations 🔗

To activate the Windows Performance Counters receiver add a windowsperfcounters entry inside the receivers section of the Collector configuration file. For example:

receivers:
  windowsperfcounters:
    metrics:
      bytes.committed:
        description: the number of bytes committed to memory
        unit: By
        gauge:
    collection_interval: 30s
    perfcounters:
    - object: Memory
      counters:
        - name: Committed Bytes
          metric: bytes.committed

To complete the configuration, include the receiver in the metrics pipeline of the service section of your configuration file. For example:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers:
        - windowsperfcounters

To collect metrics from Windows performance counters, you need to define metrics using the metrics field as in the example. You can then reference the metrics you defined from the counters.metric fields.

Metric format 🔗

To report metrics in a specific format, define the metric and reference it in the corresponding counter, along with any applicable attributes. By default, the metric name corresponds to the name of the counter.

Metrics can be of type sum or gauge. Sum metrics support the aggregation and monotonic fields.

Field	Description	Value	Default
`name`	Metric key or name. Can be any non empty string.	String	Name of the counter
`description`	Description of the metric or measurement	String
`unit`	Unit of measurement	String	`1`
`sum`	Representation of a sum metric	Sum configuration
`gauge`	Representation of a gauge metric	Gauge configuration

The following settings apply to sum metrics:

Field	Description	Value	Default
`aggregation`	Type of aggregation temporality for the metric	`cumulative` or `delta`
`monotonic`	Whether the metric value can decrease	`false`

The following settings apply to gauge metrics:

The gauge configuration doesn’t accept settings. The following example emits the Memory/Committed Bytes counter as the bytes.committed metric:

receivers:
  windowsperfcounters:
    metrics:
      bytes.committed:
        description: the number of bytes committed to memory
        unit: By
        gauge:
    collection_interval: 30s
    perfcounters:
    - object: Memory
      counters:
        - name: Committed Bytes
          metric: bytes.committed

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [windowsperfcounters]

Configure collection interval and counters 🔗

You can configure the collection interval and which performance counters you want to scrape. For example:

windowsperfcounters:
 collection_interval: <duration>
 initial_delay: <duration>
 metrics:
   <metric name 1>:
     description: <description>
     unit: <unit type>
     gauge: null
   <metric name 2>:
     description: <description>
     unit: <unit type>
     sum: null
     aggregation: <cumulative or delta>
     monotonic: <true or false>
 perfcounters:
   - object: <object name>
     instances:
       - <instance name>
     counters:
       - name: <counter name>
         metric: <metric name>
         attributes:
           <key>: <value>

Scrape at different collection intervals 🔗

The following example shows how to scrape performance counters using different collection intervals depending on the target:

receivers:
  windowsperfcounters/memory:
    metrics:
      bytes.committed:
        description: Number of bytes committed to memory
        unit: By
        gauge:
    collection_interval: 30s
      perfcounters:
        - object: Memory
          counters:
            - name: Committed Bytes
              metric: bytes.committed

  windowsperfcounters/processor:
    collection_interval: 1m
      metrics:
        processor.time:
        description: CPU active and idle time
        unit: "%"
        gauge:
    perfcounters:
      - object: "Processor"
        instances: "*"
        counters:
          - name: "% Processor Time"
            metric: processor.time
            attributes:
              state: active
      - object: "Processor"
        instances: [1, 2]
        counters:
          - name: "% Idle Time"
            metric: processor.time
            attributes:
              state: idle

  # ...

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [windowsperfcounters/memory, windowsperfcounters/processor]

Instances configuration 🔗

An instance is any entity that produces performance data. Instances can have one or more counter values.

The receiver supports the following values through the instances field:

Value	Interpretation
`"*"`	All instances
`"_Total"`	The total instance
`"instance1"`	Single instance
`["instance1", "instance2", ...]`	Set of instances
`["_Total", "instance1", "instance2", ...]`	Set of instances including the total instance

Known limitations 🔗

Metrics from the Network Interface object aren’t generated when running the Collector inside a container. This is caused by the network interface not being available inside the container. Network Interface metrics are captured for subprocesses.

Settings 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for the Windows Performance Counters receiver:

Troubleshooting 🔗

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal .
Call Splunk Customer Support .

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers .
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups in the Get Started with Splunk Community manual.

To learn about even more support options, see Splunk Customer Success .

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