OpenTelemetry Metrics (otel.plugin)

otel.plugin is a Netdata external plugin, enabling users to ingest, store and visualize OpenTelemetry metrics in charts.

Configuration

Edit the otel.yml configuration file using edit-config from the Netdata config directory, which is typically located under /etc/netdata.

cd /etc/netdata # Replace this path with your Netdata config directory
sudo ./edit-config otel.yml

gRPC Endpoint

By default otel.plugin listens for incoming OTLP-formatted metrics on localhost:4317 via gRPC. Users can set up a secure TLS connection by updating the TLS configuration in the endpoint section:

endpoint:
  # gRPC endpoint to listen on for OpenTelemetry data
  path: "127.0.0.1:4317"

  # Path to TLS certificate file (enables TLS when provided)
  tls_cert_path: null

  # Path to TLS private key file (required when TLS certificate is provided)
  tls_key_path: null

  # Path to TLS CA certificate file for client authentication (optional)
  tls_ca_cert_path: null

Metrics

The metrics section allows users to specify the directory containing configuration files for mapping OpenTelemetry metrics to Netdata chart instances, and the number of metric samples the otel.plugin will use for detecting their collection interval:

metrics:
  # Directory with configuration files for mapping OTEL metrics to Netdata charts
  # (relative paths are resolved based on Netdata's user configuration directory)
  chart_configs_dir: otel.d/v1/metrics/

  # Number of samples to buffer for collection interval detection
  buffer_samples: 10

Mapping OpenTelemetry metrics to Netdata chart instances

Without an explicit mapping, the otel.plugin defaults to creating distinct chart instances based on the attributes of each data point in a metric. Users can place their YAML chart configuration files under otel.d/v1/metrics to override, or fine-tune, the default mapping.

For each instrumentation scope and metric name, the configuration defines the attributes that the otel.plugin will use when creating new chart instances and dimension names.

For example, the following bit from the otel.d/v1/metrics/hostmetrics.yml configuration file for the hostmetrics receiver:

select:
  instrumentation_scope_name: hostmetricsreceiver.*networkscraper
  metric_name: system.network.connections
extract:
    chart_instance_pattern: metric.attributes.protocol
    dimension_name: metric.attributes.state

will apply to metrics whose instrumentation scope and metric names match the corresponding regular expressions specified in the values of the instrumentation_scope_name and metric_name keys. Similarly, the values of the protocol and state attributes of each data point in the matched metric will be used to create a new chart instance with the proper dimension names.