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OpenTelemetry Infinity

The opentelemetry_infinity backend embeds the OpenTelemetry Infinity process inside Orb Agent to run manageable and policy-driven otel-collector-contrib instances. Each Orb policy will spin up a new otelcol-contrib process running the configuration provided by the policy.

Configuration​

The opentelemetry_infinity backend does not require any special configuration, though overriding host and port values can be specified. Other backends will use the otlp settings specified in the common subsection to forward telemetry data if specified.

orb:
  backends:
    opentelemetry_infinity:
      host: 192.168.5.11 # default localhost
      port: 9000 # default 10222 
    common:
      otlp:
        grpc: http://0.0.0.0:4319
        http: http://0.0.0.0:4320

Policies​

Policies for the opentelemetry_infinity backend are defined under orb.policies.opentelemetry_infinity in Orb agent configuration files. Each entry key under orb.policies.opentelemetry_infinity defines a policy that will define an OpenTelemetry Collector configuration that will be passed to the otelcol-contrib process. The policy body must be a valid otelcol configuration, as described in the OpenTelemetry documentation.

Default Collector Policy​

We recommend creating a default_collector_config policy to provide a data pipeline to receive OTLP metrics from other backends and export them to your data repository of choice. The otlp endpoints defined in the receivers section should correspond with those defined in the orb.backends.common.otlp section.

Here is an example default_collector_config policy to write to a Grafana Cloud Prometheus database:

orb:
  policies:
    opentelemetry_infinity:
      default_collector_config:
        extensions:
          basicauth:
            client_auth:
              username: ${env:GRAFANA_USERNAME}
              password: ${env:GRAFANA_API_TOKEN}
        receivers:
          otlp:
            protocols:
              grpc: 
                endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4319
              http: 
                endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4320
        processors:
          batch:
            send_batch_size: 1000
            send_batch_max_size: 2000
        exporters:
          prometheusremotewrite:
            endpoint: ${env:GRAFANA_TARGET}
            auth:
              authenticator: basicauth
        service:
          extensions:
            - basicauth
          pipelines:
            metrics:
              receivers: [otlp]
              processors: [batch]
              exporters: [prometheusremotewrite]

[!TIP] You can reference environment variables that were passed to Orb agent on startup in your policies by using the ${env:ENV_VARIABLE_NAME} format.

Collector Policies​

The opentelemetry_infinity backend packages a complete OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib release and enables all the available Receivers, Processors, Exporters and Connectors in that release. Collector policies simply need to be valid Collector configurations.

Here is an example policy using the httpcheck Receiver and exporting to our default_collector_config OTLP endpoint:

orb:
  policies:
    opentelemetry_infinity:
      httpcheck_example:
        receivers:
          httpcheck:
            collection_interval: 60s
            targets:
              - endpoint: "https://netboxlabs.com"
        processors:
          batch:
            send_batch_max_size: 1000
            send_batch_size: 100
            timeout: 10s
        exporters:
          otlp:
            endpoint: http://0.0.0.0:4319
            tls:
              insecure: true
        service:
          pipelines:
            metrics:
              receivers: [httpcheck]
              processors: [batch]
              exporters: [otlp]

Additional resources​

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