Configure Telegraf manually

You can install and configure Telegraf manually to send data to SolarWinds Observability, for example for Telegraf inputs that are not available in the Add integration wizard yet. When you configure sending Telegraf data this way, no entities are created in SolarWinds Observability. The ingested data is available in the Metrics Explorer and can be added to custom dashboards.

Limitations

• Text values are not supported as metric data points, only as metric attributes. If you gather data as text values and send it to SolarWinds Observability, the data gets discarded and never reaches SolarWinds Observability.

  To send text values, re-map them to numerical values before the data is sent to SolarWinds Observability. To do so, you can use the Telegraf enum processor.

• No entities get created. Direct ingestion only sends raw metrics.

  SolarWinds recommends using the Add Integration wizard to integrate Telegraf to SolarWinds Observability. Using the Add Integration wizard, most integrations create an entity visible in Entity Explorer, with out-of-the-box details views.

Add Telegraf integration

To ingest Telegraf data to SolarWinds Observability , do the following:

1. Install Telegraf. See instructions on Install Telegraf.

2. Create a telegraf.conf file that contains the correct configuration options for the service to monitor (input) and for the information to be sent to SolarWinds Observability (output). See Telegraf | Generate a custom configuration file.

   For example, the following command generated the configuration for Apache monitoring with opentelemetry output.

   telegraf --sample-config --input-filter apache --output-filter opentelemetry > telegraf.conf

3. Set up the input for monitoring. The configuration depends on the Telegraf input, such as URLs, paths, or certificates. See Telegraf | Plugin directory.

4. Set up the output. The values included in the code are required for the successful data submission and ingestion.

   Include the following section, replacing:

   • otel.collector.xx-yy.cloud.solarwinds.com:443 with the correct endpoint for your organization. See Data centers and endpoint URIs.
   • ABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123ab with your SolarWinds Observability API token. See API Tokens.

   [[outputs.opentelemetry]]
       service_address = "otel.collector.xx-yy.cloud.solarwinds.com:443"  # differs per production environment
       insecure_skip_verify = true
     [outputs.opentelemetry.headers]
       Authorization = "ABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123abcABC123ab" # create one in SWO settings -> API Tokens

5. Start the Telegraf service with the prepared config. For example, the following command should work for starting the service:

   telegraf --config /telegraf/telegraf.conf

6. The metrics are pushed to SolarWinds Observability. The expected format is {input_name}_metric_name, such as apache_CPULoad.

Stop collecting the data / remove the integration

To stop sending telemetry data to SolarWinds Observability, stop the Telegraf process.

To remove the integration from SolarWinds Observability manually, stop the Telegraf process, uninstall Telegraf, and remove the configuration file.