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Install a Windows OS collector

The APEX AIOps Incident Management Collector is an agent that observes time-series metrics and sends the metrics to Incident Management. You can install the collector on Windows, Linux, or MacOS. With the installation of an Incident Management Collector on the system of your choice, you can quickly gather relevant metrics about your systems.

You can use a Windows collector in combination with enabled plugins to collect a variety of metrics on a Windows system. You can quickly collect general system metrics using the System plugin, which is installed and enabled by default when you install a collector.

See Install a Linux or MacOS collector for information on installing on Linux or MacOS.

Before installing an Incident Management Collector

Before you begin, you must:

  • Be familiar with Windows Services.

  • Set up your Windows system environment variables.

    NOTE: You can do this either before or after installation.

  • Have a Windows administrator account.

  • Enable all Windows disk counters to get Windows disk metrics.

    To do this:

    1. You need to be a member of the Administrators local group. See your Windows OS documentation for more information.

    2. Open a command prompt or PowerShell terminal on your Windows system.

    3. Run the diskperf -y command.

Install the Incident Management Collector on a Windows OS

To install a collector on a Windows system, do the following:

  1. In your Incident Management instance, navigate to Integrations > Ingestion Services > Collectors.

  2. Click the Installation tab and select the Windows platform from the installation options on the left.

    The Incident Management Collector runs on the following Windows versions:

    1. Windows OS version 7, 8.1, 10, and 11.

    2. Windows Server 2019 and Windows Server 2022.

  3. Click Download to download the collector-0.20.1-x64.msi (or later) file on your Windows system.

    Next, you need to run the Collector Startup Wizard.

Run the Collector Startup Wizard in Windows

To run the Collector Startup Wizard:

  1. On your target Windows system, navigate to the location where you saved the .msi file, then click it to run the wizard.

    The default user for the .msi file is set as a Windows administrator, so you must have a Windows administrator role to run the installer.

  2. In the wizard, read and accept the License Agreement. Then, select a custom destination folder, or use the default.

    1. The default Destination Folder is C:\Program Files\Moogsoft\.

    2. You can select a different destination folder; however, you can only install one Incident Management Collector per system.

  3. Next, enter the API Key for your Incident Management instance and the Base URL for that same instance.

    The following examples show the respective formats:

    1. Non-Working API Key example: 7zzz8112-yyy9-408e-846z-f8928f08ake9

    2. Base URL example: https://api.moogsoft.ai

    Note

    To get the API key and Base URL, navigate to Integrations > Ingestion Services > Collectors > Installation tab, and click the Linux option. Copy that API key and URL from the code. You can use the same key and URL for Windows.

  4. Click Install, Next, and Finish to complete the installation.

  5. Use the Windows Control Panel, or any of the other Windows methods, to access Windows Services. Find Moogsoft Collector in the list of services, and confirm the Status for the collector is Running.

    The following image shows the Windows Services > View > Details option.

    WindowsServices-details.png

After it is installed and running on Windows, the collector name appears in the Collectors list. Since the Incident Management System plugin is enabled by default on all collectors, Incident Management Metrics will also display selected Windows metrics.

Note

You can go to this list by clicking the Collectors List text on the Installation tab page or, if not on that page, by navigating to Ingestion Services > Collectors. Either method shows the Collectors tab, by default, and a list of installed collectors, OS types, advanced configurations, and plugins. You can also check Ingestion Services > All. Remember to look for the collector icon:

collector-icon.png

Start, stop and remove a Windows collector

You can start or restart, stop, and remove a Windows collector using Windows system sc commands. For detailed instructions, refer to Collector Operations. As shown in the following image, you can also run the Windows Collector wizard to repair or remove the Windows collector.

Windows-wizardrepair.png

Validate your Windows collector installation

  • Check the Collectors List to see if the Windows Collector is listed.

  • To view logs in the Incident Management console, navigate to Integrations > Ingestion Services > Collectors > specific collector > Collector Logs. Local logs are not available for the Windows collector.

  • Check Incident Management metrics to validate that you are receiving Windows data. The System plugin is enabled by default for all Incident Management Collector installations, so you should get system metrics such as host_boot_time from your Windows system.

Troubleshoot your Windows collector installation

In some rare cases, the collector service can enter a starting state that never completes. To check if this is happening on your server, run the sc.exe query vector command. The following example shows a vector process in a START_PENDING STATE.

1 PS C:\Program Files\Moogsoft> sc.exe query vector
2
3 SERVICE_NAME: vector
4        TYPE               : 10  WIN32_OWN_PROCESS
5        STATE              : 2  START_PENDING
6                                (NOT_STOPPABLE, NOT_PAUSABLE, IGNORES_SHUTDOWN)
7        WIN32_EXIT_CODE    : 0  (0x0)
8        SERVICE_EXIT_CODE  : 0  (0x0)
9        CHECKPOINT         : 0x0
10       WAIT_HINT          : 0x7d0

When this occurs, you should use the following steps to remove the task and allow you to uninstall/reinstall or restart the service.

  1. Open a Windows command prompt or PowerShell terminal.

  2. Run the command taskkill /IM "collector.exe" /F.

    This command ends any running process with a name that matches that of the collector.

Configure a collector plugin

To enable a specific plugin for your Windows collector:

  1. Go to Integrations > Ingestion Services > Collectors. This page displays a tab labeled Collectors and a tab labeled Plugins.

  2. Click one of the collectors in the list.

  3. On the Plugins tab, click the plugin to install.

  4. Use the default configuration, or change the configuration for that plugin, and then click Enable.

    Note

    You can find detailed instructions on configuring specific plugins in Configuring a Collector plugin.

Incident Management Collectors can be started or restarted, stopped, and deleted. Plugins can be enabled or disabled. For detailed instructions, refer to Collector Operations.

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