Win Perf Counters retrieved are for the local machine and not the remote server

InfluxDB 2
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1

Using Windows version of telegraf, running it on my local machine.
Connected to InfluxDb 2 running from Docker.
Essentially using the example from the README file in Git.
Telegraf.conf is set to read from a remote server.

  ## Override default hostname, if empty use os.Hostname()
  hostname = "qaMyServer01"

etc.

  [[inputs.win_perf_counters.object]]
    # .NET CLR Exceptions, in this case for IIS only
    ObjectName = ".NET CLR Exceptions"
    Counters = [
		"# of Exceps Thrown / sec",
	]
    Instances = [""]
    Measurement = "win_dotnet_exceptions"
    #IncludeTotal=false #Set to true to include _Total instance when querying for all (*).
  [[inputs.win_perf_counters.object]]
    # .NET CLR Memory, in this case for IIS only
    ObjectName = ".NET CLR Memory"
	Counters = [
		"% Time in GC",
	]
	# "# Bytes in all Heaps","# Gen 0 Collections","# Gen 1 Collections","# Gen 2 Collections","# Induced GC","Allocated Bytes/sec","Finalization Survivors","Gen 0 heap size","Gen 1 heap size","Gen 2 heap size","Large Object Heap size","# of Pinned Objects"]
    Instances = ["w3wp"]
    Measurement = "win_dotnet_mem"
    #IncludeTotal=false #Set to true to include _Total instance when querying for all (*).

In spite of the host value having been set to my remote server, these processes are the ones running on my local computer.

Why would it do that?

I can tell this is so because the instances available include processes, like Outlook, that I know are running on my local machine and not on the remote server.
image

2

The host setting in the telegraf config just overrides the name you get from the systems environment variable. You’re essentially renaming your local machine by the looks of it.

Have you installed telegraf on the remote server?

3

Bingo: I have not. So I gather that Telegraf has to be running on the remote hosts I want to monitor.

I’ll talk to the DevOps people here. I know they already are using Icinga with Influx, so maybe they can either create the dashboards I need or allow me to have access to change add my own.

4

Yep if you want the windows performance data you need to install the agent on that machine and point it to your influxdb container.

If you use vsphere/vmware there is a plugin you can configure centrally that will gather info from all VM’s and hosts, but i don’t think you can get the specific performance counters you are looking for with that method. I’ve not checked to be honest, we collect data direct from the server and from vsphere.