OpenTelemetry Operator for Kubernetes

An implementation of a Kubernetes Operator, that manages collectors and auto-instrumentation of the workload using OpenTelemetry instrumentation libraries.

Introduction

The OpenTelemetry Operator is an implementation of a Kubernetes Operator.

The operator manages:

Getting started

To install the operator in an existing cluster, make sure you have cert-manager installed and run:

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/releases/latest/download/opentelemetry-operator.yaml

Once the opentelemetry-operator deployment is ready, create an OpenTelemetry Collector (otelcol) instance, like:

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: opentelemetry.io/v1alpha1
kind: OpenTelemetryCollector
metadata:
  name: simplest
spec:
  config: |
    receivers:
      otlp:
        protocols:
          grpc:
            endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
          http:
            endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
    processors:

    exporters:
      # NOTE: Prior to v0.86.0 use `logging` instead of `debug`.
      debug:

    service:
      pipelines:
        traces:
          receivers: [otlp]
          processors: []
          exporters: [debug]
EOF

For more configuration options and for setting up the injection of auto-instrumentation of the workloads using OpenTelemetry instrumentation libraries, continue reading here.

Injecting Auto-instrumentation

An implementation of auto-instrumentation using the OpenTelemetry Operator.

Target Allocator

A tool to distribute targets of the PrometheusReceiver on all deployed Collector instances

Troubleshooting the OpenTelemetry Operator for Kubernetes

Contains a collection of tips for troubleshooting various aspects of the OpenTelemetry Kubernetes Operator. For example, what to do when the target allocator is failing to discover scrape targets.


Last modified January 20, 2025: Update _index.md (#5978) (92bdff3b)