title: Cannot enable basic auth on Windows-Exporter to secure node between Windows and Prometheus
body: <p>As a test environment to monitor status of Windows Servers (CPU, Disk usage, Memory, network etc) I have placed two testing nodes with Windows-Exporter configured on custom port :15000</p>
  <p>Next, I have created proper jobs for each separate Windows instances and created dashboard in Grafana.</p>
  <p>The problem is that I'm looking for securing nodes so only Prometheus server can access node output and all other computers in same network get deny access to node website.</p>
  <p>I have tried to install Windows Node with setting:</p>
  <pre><code>msiexec /i windows_exporter-0.19.0-amd64.msi LISTEN_PORT=&quot;15000&quot; EXTRA_FLAGS=&quot;--web.config.file=C:\Configuration\web.yml&quot;
  </code></pre>
  <p>As well as with different configurations of &quot; and ' in commandline for EXTRA_FLAGS parameter - yet it seems they are being ignored. The only parameter working fine is change of listen port.</p>
  <p>I have followed instructions provided at <a href="https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/basic-auth/" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://prometheus.io/docs/guides/basic-auth/</a> to set up basic auth.</p>
  <p>Web.yml looks like this:</p>
  <pre><code> basic_auth:
        username: 'scrapper'
        password: '$2a$14$AWpxyT1KcRPSE07IfmqTqOZznpMfGwxHP8uPVQV8G0qdjggND3hgC'
  </code></pre>
  <p>However, after installation with <code>msiexec</code> - entry in Windows services for windows_exporter is without web.config.file entry:</p>
  <pre><code>&quot;C:\Program Files\windows_exporter\windows_exporter.exe&quot; --log.format logger:eventlog?name=windows_exporter --telemetry.addr 0.0.0.0:15000
  </code></pre>
  <p>I have tried to edit service entry with <code>sc</code> command but it broke node completely, making me rolling back to unprotected access to node.</p>
  <p>Does basic auth work on windows-exporter same way as on node-exporter for Linux OSes?
  Or is there other possible way to secure access to node exposed data without need to install IIS?</p>