Process collector serves different results on two near-identical servers

[latere-a-latere]

I have two servers:

• Server A: Windows Server 2016, OS Build 14393.5291
• Server B: Windows Server 2016, OS Build 14393.5192

Both servers run the same IIS version and have windows_exporter 0.20 installed. I use the following config file on both installations:

collectors:
  enabled: cpu,os,cs,process,system,net,time,iis,memory,mssql
collector:
  process:
    whitelist: (w3wp|sqlservr).*
log:
  level: warn

On server A, my metrics look like this:

...
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="16340"} 1.665100801756524e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="17080"} 1.665133994863656e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="1756"} 1.6651348187074437e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="17732"} 1.6651008015363705e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="19004"} 1.6651008015409024e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="20696"} 1.6651340591289651e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="21120"} 1.6651008016711247e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="23896"} 1.6651008016025145e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="26168"} 1.6651236574035077e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2196",process="w3wp",process_id="27448"} 1.6651008016065788e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="616",process="sqlservr",process_id="3140"} 1.6606089232324252e+09
...

On server B, they look like this:

...
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2408",process="w3wp_Azure DevOps Server Application Pool",process_id="3316"} 1.66375170106868e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2408",process="w3wp_Grafana (rewrite)",process_id="14936"} 1.6651420802270162e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="2408",process="w3wp_Prometheus (rewrite)",process_id="7236"} 1.6651423666179688e+09
windows_process_start_time{creating_process_id="712",process="sqlservr",process_id="3552"} 1.6577795374893532e+09
...

Server B for some reason also tells me the user (appPool name) that is running the w3wp.exe process, which is great and preferable, because it allows me to distinguish the process in Grafana. Why does server A completely omit this? Am I missing a setting somewhere?

[latere-a-latere]

Spent a bit of digging and turns out that this happens when the IIS Management Scripts and Tools are installed. I've created PR #1077 which documents this feature.