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Configuring the Collector metrics

Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry 3.9

Monitoring OpenTelemetry Collector performance and resource usage

Red Hat OpenShift Documentation Team

Abstract

Learn how to enable metrics collection to monitor the performance of the Collector.

The following list shows some of these metrics:

  • Collector memory usage
  • CPU utilization
  • Number of active traces and spans processed
  • Dropped spans, logs, or metrics
  • Exporter and receiver statistics

The Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry Operator automatically creates a service named <instance_name>-collector-monitoring that exposes the Collector’s internal metrics. This service listens on port 8888 by default.

You can use these metrics for monitoring the Collector’s performance, resource consumption, and other internal behaviors. You can also use a Prometheus instance or another monitoring tool to scrape these metrics from the mentioned <instance_name>-collector-monitoring service.

Note

When the spec.observability.metrics.enableMetrics field in the OpenTelemetryCollector custom resource (CR) is set to true, the OpenTelemetryCollector CR automatically creates a Prometheus ServiceMonitor or PodMonitor CR to enable Prometheus to scrape your metrics.

Prerequisites

  • Monitoring for user-defined projects is enabled in the cluster.

Procedure

  • To enable metrics of an OpenTelemetry Collector instance, set the spec.observability.metrics.enableMetrics field to true: 

    apiVersion: opentelemetry.io/v1beta1
kind: OpenTelemetryCollector
metadata:
  name: <name>
spec:
  observability:
    metrics:
      enableMetrics: true
    Copy to Clipboard Toggle word wrap

Verification

You can use the Administrator view of the web console to verify successful configuration:

  1. Go to Observe → Targets.
  2. Filter by Source: User.
  3. Check that the ServiceMonitors or PodMonitors in the opentelemetry-collector-<instance_name> format have the Up status.

Additional resources

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