Sending Telemetry to Observability Platforms

Like any application instrumented with OpenTelemetry, MetricsHub utilizes the OTLP protocol to transmit data. Although MetricsHub Community can directly send metrics to observability platforms that support OpenTelemetry natively, it is usually recommended in production environments to use an OpenTelemetry Collector to:

  • Aggregate metrics across different sources.
  • Serve as a proxy, particularly in firewall-secured areas.
  • Manage error handling, including retries.

Bundled with OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib, MetricsHub Enterprise facilitates connections to over 30 different observability platforms.

Configure the OTel Collector (Enterprise Edition)

As a regular OpenTelemetry Collector, MetricsHub Enterprise consists of:

  • receivers
  • processors
  • exporters
  • and several extensions.

This version of MetricsHub Enterprise leverages version 0.102.0 of OpenTelemetry.

To configure the OpenTelemetry Collector of MetricsHub Enterprise, edit the otel/otel-config.yaml file.

Important: We recommend using an editor supporting the Schemastore[1] to edit MetricsHub's configuration YAML files (Example: Visual Studio Code[2] and vscode.dev[3], with RedHat's YAML extension[4]).

Receivers

OTLP gRPC

Warning: Only update this section if you customized the MetricsHub Agent settings[5]. The MetricsHub Agent pushes the collected data to the OTLP Receiver[6] via gRPC[7] on port TCP/4317.

The OTLP Receiver is configured by default with the self-signed certificate security/otel.crt and the private key security/otel.key to enable the TLS protocol. If you wish to set your own certificate file, configure the MetricsHub Agent with the correct Trusted Certificates File[8]. Because the OTLP Exporter of the MetricsHub Agent performs hostname verification, you will also have to add the localhost entry (DNS:localhost,IP:127.0.0.1) to the Subject Alternative Name (SAN) extension of the new generated certificate.

Clients requests are authenticated with the Basic Authenticator extension[9].

  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: localhost:4317
        tls:
          cert_file: ../security/otel.crt
          key_file: ../security/otel.key
        auth:
          authenticator: basicauth

OpenTelemetry Collector Internal Exporter for Prometheus

The OpenTelemetry Collector's internal Exporter for Prometheus is an optional source of data. It provides information about the collector activity. It's referred to as prometheus/internal in the pipeline and leverages the standard prometheus receiver[10].

  prometheus/internal:
    config:
      scrape_configs:
        - job_name: otel-collector-internal
          scrape_interval: 60s
          static_configs:
            - targets: [ localhost:8888 ]

Under the service:telemetry:metrics section, you can set the metrics level or the address of the OpenTelemetry Collector Internal Exporter (by default: localhost:8888).

service:
  telemetry:
    metrics:
      address: localhost:8888
      level: basic

Processors

By default, the collected metrics go through 5 processors:

Exporters

The exporters section defines the destination of the collected metrics. MetricsHub Enterprise version 1.0.00 includes support for all the OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib exporters[16], such as:

You can configure several exporters in the same instance of the OpenTelemetry Collector to send the collected metrics to multiple platforms.

Extensions

HealthCheck

The healthcheck[23] extension checks the status of MetricsHub Enterprise . It is activated by default and runs on port 13133 (http://localhost:13133[24]).

Refer to Check the collector is up and running[25] for more details.

zpages

The zpages extension provides debug information about all the different components. It notably provides:

  • general information about MetricsHub
  • details about the active pipeline
  • activity details of each receiver and exporter configured in the pipeline.

Refer to Check the pipelines status[26] for more details.

Basic Authenticator

The Basic Authenticator[9] extension authenticates the OTLP Exporter requests by comparing the Authorization header sent by the OTLP Exporter and the credentials provided in the security/.htpasswd file. Refer to the Apache htpasswd[27] documentation to know how to manage user files for basic authentication.

  basicauth:
    htpasswd:
      file: ../security/.htpasswd

The .htpasswd file is stored in the security directory.

Warning: If a different password is specified in the .htpasswd file, update the Basic Authentication Header[28] of the MetricsHub Agent.

The Pipeline

Configured extensions, receivers, processors and exporters are taken into account if and only if they are declared in the pipeline:

service:
  telemetry:
    logs:
      level: info # Change to debug for more details
    metrics:
      address: localhost:8888
      level: basic
  extensions: [health_check, basicauth]
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp, prometheus/internal]
      processors: [memory_limiter, batch, resourcedetection, metricstransform]
      exporters: [prometheusremotewrite/your-server] # List here the platform of your choice

    # Uncomment the section below to enable logging of hardware alerts.
    # logs:
    #   receivers: [otlp]
    #   processors: [memory_limiter, batch, resourcedetection]
    #   exporters: [logging] # List here the platform of your choice

Configure the OTLP Exporter (Community Edition)

By default, the MetricsHub Agent pushes the collected metrics to the OTLP Receiver[6] through gRPC on port TCP/4317. To push data to the OTLP receiver of your choice:

  • locate the otel section in your configuration file
  • configure the otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.endpoint and otel.exporter.otlp.logs.endpoint parameters as follows:
otel:
  otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.endpoint: https://<my-host>:4317
  otel.exporter.otlp.logs.endpoint: https://<my-host>:4317

resourceGroups: #...

where <my-host> should be replaced with the hostname or IP address of the server where the OTLP receiver is installed.

Use the below syntax if you wish to push metrics to the Prometheus OTLP Receiver:

otel:
  otel.metrics.exporter: otlp
  otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.endpoint: http://<prom-server-host>:9090/api/v1/otlp/v1/metrics
  otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.protocol: http/protobuf

where <prom-server-host> should be replaced with the hostname or IP address of the server where Prometheus is running.

Note: For specific configuration details, refer to the OpenTelemetry Auto-Configure documentation[29]. This resource provides information about the properties to be configured depending on your deployment requirements.

Trusted certificates file

If an OTLP Receiver certificate is required, configure the otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.certificate and otel.exporter.otlp.logs.certificate parameters under the otel section:

otel:
  otel.exporter.otlp.metrics.certificate: /opt/metricshub/security/new-server-cert.crt
  otel.exporter.otlp.logs.certificate: /opt/metricshub/security/new-server-cert.crt

resourceGroups: # ...

The file should contain one or more X.509 certificates in PEM format.

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