Windows Performance Counters (deprecated)

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the Telegraf win_perf_counters monitor for Windows. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

CAUTION: This integration is deprecated and will reach End of Support in a future release. During this period only critical security and bug fixes are provided. When End of Support is reached, the monitor will be removed and no longer be supported, and you won't be able to use it to send data to Splunk Observability Cloud. To forward metrics from Windows Performance Counters to Splunk Observability Cloud, use the Windows Performance Counters receiver instead.

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the telegraf/win_perf_counters monitor type to receive metrics from Windows performance counters.

This monitor is available on Windows.

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host:
- Install on Windows
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/telegraf/win_perf_counters:
    type: telegraf/win_perf_counters
    ... # Additional config

The following snippet shows a sample configuration with counters and settings:

receivers:
 - type: telegraf/win_perf_counters
   printValid: true
   objects:
    - objectName: "Processor"
      instances:
       - "*"
      counters:
       - "% Idle Time"
       - "% Interrupt Time"
       - "% Privileged Time"
       - "% User Time"
       - "% Processor Time"
      includeTotal: true
      measurement: "win_cpu"

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/telegraf/win_perf_counters]

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for the telegraf/win_perf_counters receiver:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`objects`	No	`list of objects (see below)`	Contains the configuration of the monitor.
`counterRefreshInterval`	No	`int64`	Frequency of expansion of the counter paths and counter refresh. The default value is `5s`)
`useWildCardExpansion`	No	`bool`	If set to `true`, instance indexes are included in instance names, and wildcards are expanded and localized when applicable. The default value is `false`.
`printValid`	No	`bool`	Print the configurations that match available performance counters. The default value is `false`.
`pcrMetricNames`	No	`bool`	If `true`, metric names are emitted in the `PerfCounterReporter` format. The default value is `false`.

The nested objects configuration object has the following fields:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`objectName`	No	`string`	The name of a Windows performance counter object.
`counters`	No	`list of strings`	The name of the counters to collect from the performance counter object.
`instances`	No	`list of strings`	The Windows performance counter instances to retrieve for the performance counter object.
`measurement`	No	`string`	The name of the Telegraf measurement to be used as a metric name.
`warnOnMissing`	No	`bool`	Log a warning if the performance counter object is missing. The default value is `false`.
`failOnMissing`	No	`bool`	Throws an error if the performance counter object is missing. The default value is `false`.
`includeTotal`	No	`bool`	Include the total instance when collecting performance counter metrics. The default value is `false`.

Metrics

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector doesn’t filter metrics for this 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.
Contact Splunk 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.

Documentation