Windows host monitoring with OpenTelemetry

The OpenTelemetry Collector’s hostmetrics receiver reads CPU, memory, disk, filesystem, network, and load statistics from a Windows host. The windowsperfcounters receiver adds Windows-native performance counters that hostmetrics does not expose. You run the Collector as a Windows service so it starts with the machine.

Prerequisites

• Windows Server 2016+ or Windows 10/11.
• An elevated (Administrator) PowerShell session.
• Your Osuite ingest endpoint and token.

Set up the Collector

1. Install the Collector as a service. The contrib MSI installs the hostmetrics and windowsperfcounters receivers and registers a Windows service named otelcol-contrib. Run in an elevated PowerShell:

   $OtelcolVersion = "0.156.0"
   Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-releases/releases/download/v$OtelcolVersion/otelcol-contrib_${OtelcolVersion}_windows_x64.msi" -OutFile "$env:TEMP\otelcol-contrib.msi"
   msiexec /i "$env:TEMP\otelcol-contrib.msi" /quiet

2. Configure the receivers, processor, and exporter. Replace the contents of C:\Program Files\OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib\config.yaml with the following. Both receivers are wired into the metrics pipeline.

   receivers:
     hostmetrics:
       collection_interval: 30s
       scrapers:
         cpu:
         memory:
         disk:
         filesystem:
         network:
         load:
     windowsperfcounters:
       collection_interval: 30s
       metrics:
         system.processes.count:
           description: Number of processes on the host.
           unit: "{processes}"
           gauge:
       perfcounters:
         - object: System
           counters:
             - name: Processes
               metric: system.processes.count
   
   processors:
     resourcedetection:
       detectors: [env, system]
       system:
         hostname_sources: [os]
     batch:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [hostmetrics, windowsperfcounters]
         processors: [resourcedetection, batch]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

3. Restart the service.

   Restart-Service otelcol-contrib
   Get-Service otelcol-contrib

Note

The windowsperfcounters receiver reaches any counter exposed by the Windows Performance Data Helper. The example above collects the process count; add more perfcounters blocks to gather counters such as Memory\Available Bytes or Processor(_Total)\% Processor Time, and map each to a metric name.

Validate

Confirm the service is running:

Get-Service otelcol-contrib

The Collector logs to the Windows Event Log under the otelcol-contrib source. Open Event Viewer → Windows Logs → Application to check for startup and OTLP export errors.

Verify in Osuite

What you should see

Host metrics arrive within a minute — check Dashboards → Explore metrics for CPU, memory, disk, filesystem, network, and load metrics alongside the Windows process count. Build a host dashboard to plot utilization per host.

Data collected

The hostmetrics receiver emits standard system.* metrics; the windowsperfcounters block above adds system.processes.count.

Metric	Description
system.cpu.time	CPU time by state (user, system, idle).
system.cpu.utilization	Fraction of CPU time by state.
system.memory.usage	Memory used, by state.
system.memory.utilization	Fraction of memory used, by state.
system.disk.io	Bytes read from and written to each disk.
system.disk.operations	Read and write operations per disk.
system.filesystem.usage	Bytes used and available per volume.
system.filesystem.utilization	Fraction of each volume used.
system.network.io	Bytes received and transmitted per interface.
system.cpu.load_average.1m	One-minute load average.
system.processes.count	Number of processes on the host (from windowsperfcounters).

Troubleshooting

If the install or service commands fail with an access error, confirm the PowerShell session is elevated (Run as Administrator). If a performance counter reports no data, verify the object and counter names against typeperf -q on the host — Windows counter names are localized and must match exactly.

No data in Osuite after a few minutes? Work through these checks.

• Endpoint — confirm the exporter targets exactly ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443 for your region, over TLS.
• Token — confirm the ingest header carries a valid <your-ingest-token> and has not been rotated.
• Pipeline — confirm the signal you expect (traces, logs, or metrics) is wired into an active pipeline with the otlp/osuite exporter attached.
• Export errors — check the application or Collector logs for OTLP export failures (auth, DNS, TLS, connection refused).
• Network — confirm the host has outbound access to the ingest endpoint on port 443.
• Timing — allow up to a minute for the first data to appear before assuming a failure.

Still stuck? Ask the Investigation Agent or contact support.

Next steps

• Linux host monitoring — the same recipe for Linux hosts
• Docker container metrics — per-container metrics
• Dashboards — build host dashboards from the collected metrics
• Alerts — alert on host CPU, memory, and disk thresholds