Run as a Windows Service

If you run SQL Exporter from Windows, it might come in handy to register it as a service to avoid interactive sessions. It is important to define --config.file parameter to load the configuration file. The other settings can be added as well. The registration itself is performed with Powershell or CMD (make sure you run it as Administrator):

New-Service -name "SqlExporterSvc" `
-BinaryPathName "%SQL_EXPORTER_PATH%\sql_exporter.exe --config.file %SQL_EXPORTER_PATH%\sql_exporter.yml" `
-StartupType Automatic `
-DisplayName "Prometheus SQL Exporter"

sc.exe create SqlExporterSvc binPath= "%SQL_EXPORTER_PATH%\sql_exporter.exe --config.file %SQL_EXPORTER_PATH%\sql_exporter.yml" start= auto

%SQL_EXPORTER_PATH% is a path to the SQL Exporter binary executable. This document assumes that configuration files are in the same location.

In case you need a more sophisticated setup (e.g. with logging, environment variables, etc), you might want to use NSSM or WinSW. Please consult their documentation for more details.