Windows Monitoring Stack (Prometheus + Grafana + Alertmanager)

A production-inspired Windows monitoring stack built using Prometheus, Grafana, Alertmanager, Docker, and windows_exporter.

This project demonstrates how to build a reusable observability system for Windows environments, designed to scale from local development to homelab and Kubernetes deployments.

Goals

• Monitor Windows systems using open-source tooling
• Build reusable, version-controlled dashboards
• Implement dynamic service discovery
• Implement alerting and routing
• Simulate real-world DevOps monitoring practices

Features

• Prometheus scraping Windows hosts via windows_exporter
• File-based service discovery (file_sd_configs)
• Alerting with Prometheus rule files
• Alert routing via Alertmanager
• Pre-provisioned Grafana dashboards (JSON)
• Fully containerized with Docker Compose
• Config-driven (no manual UI setup required)
• Designed for future Kubernetes migration

Stack

• Prometheus
• Grafana
• Alertmanager
• windows_exporter
• Docker Compose

Getting started

1. Install windows_exporter on a Windows machine

Ensure the exporter is running and accessible:

http://<host>:9182/metrics

2. Configure targets

Edit:

prometheus/targets/windows.json

Example:

[
  {
    "targets": ["10.0.100.110:9182"],
    "labels": {
      "env": "homelab"
    }
  }
]

3. Start the monitoring stack

docker compose up -d

4. Access services

Service	URL
Prometheus	http://localhost:9090
Grafana	http://localhost:3000
Alertmanager	http://localhost:9093

Grafana credentials:

User	Password
admin	admin

5. Next steps

• Build custom dashboards
• Add alerts
• Add multiple Windows hosts
• Export/import dashboards for homelab use

Secrets

This project uses inline values for local testing only.

Do not commit real credentials. In production, use Docker secrets or a secret manager and the smtp_auth_password_file configuration.

Alerting Overview

TODO

Loading

Prometheus Alerts

Alerts are defined using rule files:

prometheus/rules/

These are loaded via:

rule_files:
  - "/etc/prometheus/rules/*.yaml"

Example alert:

groups:
  - name: test
    rules:
      - alert: AlwaysFiring
        expr: vector(1)
        for: 1m
        labels:
          severity: warning
        annotations:
          summary: "Test alert"

Alertmanager Routing

Prometheus sends alerts to Alertmanager:

alerting:
  alertmanagers:
    - static_configs:
        - targets:
            - "alertmanager-wm:9093"

Alertmanager is responsible for:

• Grouping alerts
• Deduplicating alerts
• Routing alerts (email, Slack, etc.)

Verifying Alert Flow

Prometheus

http://localhost:9090/alerts

Alertmanager

http://localhost:9093

Alertmanager status in Prometheus

Status → Alertmanagers

Dashboard Overview

The default dashboard provides:

• Exporter health (UP/DOWN)
• CPU usage
• Memory usage
• System uptime
• Process count
• Network throughput
• Disk I/O
• Disk usage per volume

Project Structure

.
├── docker-compose.yaml
├── prometheus/
│   ├── prometheus.yaml
│   └── targets/
│       └── windows.json
└── grafana/
    ├── dashboards/
    │   └── windows-overview.json
    └── provisioning/
        ├── datasources/
        │   └── prometheus.yaml
        └── dashboards/
            └── dashboards.yaml

Resources:

Configuration Files Overview

Prometheus

• prometheus/prometheus.yml

  • Main Prometheus configuration
  • Defines scrape jobs and service discovery
  • Docs: https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/configuration/

• prometheus/targets/windows.json

  • File-based service discovery for Windows hosts
  • Allows dynamic updates without restarting Prometheus
  • Docs: https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/file-sd/

• alertmanager/alertmanager.yaml

  • Alertmanager configuration
  • Docs: https://prometheus.io/docs/alerting/latest/configuration/

• prometheus/rules/*.yaml

  • Prometheus rules
  • Docs: https://prometheus.io/docs/prometheus/latest/configuration/recording_rules/

Grafana

• grafana/provisioning/datasources/prometheus.yml

  • Automatically provisions Prometheus as a Grafana datasource
  • Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/administration/provisioning/#datasources

• grafana/provisioning/dashboards/dashboards.yml

  • Configures Grafana to load dashboards from files
  • Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/administration/provisioning/#dashboards

• grafana/dashboards/windows-overview.json

  • Dashboard definition (panels, queries, layout)
  • Docs: https://grafana.com/docs/grafana/latest/dashboards/json-model/

windows_exporter

• GitHub:
  • https://github.com/prometheus-community/windows_exporter