OpenTelemetry Collector

The SolarWinds OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector is a next-generation observability solution built on OpenTelemetry. It is a customized distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector, incorporating components from opentelemetry-collector and opentelemetry-collector-contrib, along with specialized SolarWinds enhancements for streamlined deployment and improved telemetry data collection.

By consolidating log, metric, and trace collection into a single collector, the SolarWinds OTel Collector enables seamless monitoring of complex distributed systems. This helps organizations quickly identify issues, optimize performance, and enhance overall system reliability.

What sets the SolarWinds OTel Collector apart is its flexibility and scalability. It can be deployed as a containerized application across any cloud platform and supports various data sources. This ensures organizations can achieve deep visibility into their infrastructure and applications, regardless of their hosting environment.

Add a SolarWinds OTel Collector to SolarWinds Observability SaaS

1. In SolarWinds Observability SaaS, click Add Data at the top.

2. In the Add Data dialog, click Infrastructure tab.

3. Click SolarWinds OTel Collector.

4. In the Deployment step, select Docker as your deployment method.

5. Choose a distribution and click Next. See Distributions for more information.

6. Type an ingestion token name or select an existing token.

7. In the Installation step, enter the collector name, create a config.yaml file containing the configuration displayed in the wizard.

8. Run the collector container with the following commands:

   docker pull solarwinds/solarwinds-otel-collector:latest-<your-selected-distribution>
   docker run -v ./config.yaml:/opt/default-config.yaml solarwinds/solarwinds-otel-collector:latest-<your-selected-distribution>

9. Wait for the metrics to be pulled from the target collector.

You can find the created SolarWinds OTel collector in the Entity Explorer. The detail view shows the version and uptime. Related metrics and traces are shown in the metrics and traces tab.

Distributions

The components available in the following distributions are listed in the SolarWinds OTel Collector repository.

Verified

The verified distribution contains only specific components. With the verified distribution, you will receive support with configuration, and the components have been tested by SolarWinds.

Playground

The playground distribution contains all components from the verified distribution, plus most of the components from opentelemetry-collector-contrib and opentelemetry-collector repositories. When using the playground distribution, we will not provide support with configuration. Also, we cannot guarantee that all components from the mentioned repositories are working as expected.

k8s

The k8s distribution contains only the components required for the Kubernetes monitoring in SolarWinds Observability SaaS.