Running Telegraf as a Windows Service

Telegraf natively supports running as a Windows Service. Outlined below is are the general steps to set it up.

Obtain the telegraf windows distribution
Create the directory C:\telegraf (if you install in a different location you will need to edit cmd/telegraf/telegraf.go and change the config file location and recompile to use your location)
Place the executable and the config file into C:\telegraf
Run C:\telegraf\telegraf.exe --service install as an administrator
Edit the configuration file to meet your needs
Run C:\telegraf\telegraf.exe --config C:\telegraf\telegraf.conf --test to check that it works
Run net start telegraf to start collecting data

Other supported operations

Telegraf can manage its own service through the --service flag:

Command	Effect
`telegraf.exe --service install`	Install telegraf as a service
`telegraf.exe --service uninstall`	Remove the telegraf service
`telegraf.exe --service start`	Start the telegraf service
`telegraf.exe --service stop`	Stop the telegraf service