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OTLP Exporter

Export OpenTelemetry to any OTLP endpoint.

Telemetry TypeSupport
Traces
Logs
Metrics

The OTLP exporter is the default, or can be explicitly selected with --exporter otlp.

OptionDefaultOptions
--otlp-exporter-endpoint
--otlp-exporter-protocolgrpcgrpc, http
--otlp-exporter-custom-headers
--otlp-exporter-compressiongzipgzip, none
--otlp-exporter-authenticatorsigv4auth
--otlp-exporter-tls-cert-file
--otlp-exporter-tls-cert-pem
--otlp-exporter-tls-key-file
--otlp-exporter-tls-key-pem
--otlp-exporter-tls-ca-file
--otlp-exporter-tls-ca-pem
--otlp-exporter-tls-skip-verify
--otlp-exporter-request-timeout5s
--otlp-exporter-retry-initial-backoff5s
--otlp-exporter-retry-max-backoff30s
--otlp-exporter-retry-max-elapsed-time300s

Any of the options that start with --otlp-exporter* can be set per telemetry type: metrics, traces or logs. For example, to set a custom endpoint to export traces to, set: --otlp-exporter-traces-endpoint. For other telemetry types their value falls back to the top-level OTLP exporter config.

note

Selecting http as the OTLP exporter protocol will export as http/protobuf. The OTLP exporter does not support HTTP/JSON.

Cloudwatch OTLP Export

The Rotel OTLP exporter can export to the Cloudwatch OTLP endpoints for traces and logs. You'll need to select the HTTP protocol and enable the sigv4auth authenticator.

See the AWS Auth page for instructions on how to retrieve credentials necessary for using the sigv4auth authenticator to export to Cloudwatch.

Traces

Here is the full environment variable configuration to send traces to Cloudwatch, swap the region code as needed.

ROTEL_EXPORTERS=traces:otlp
ROTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_PROTOCOL=http
ROTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_ENDPOINT=https://xray.<region code>.amazonaws.com
ROTEL_EXPORTER_TRACES_AUTHENTICATOR=sigv4auth
ROTEL_EXPORTERS_TRACES=traces
note

Tracing requires that you enable Transaction Search in the AWS console before you can send OTLP traces.

Logs

Here is the full environment variable configuration to send logs to Cloudwatch, swap the region code and log group/stream as needed.

ROTEL_EXPORTERS=logs:otlp
ROTEL_EXPORTER_LOGS_PROTOCOL=http
ROTEL_EXPORTER_LOGS_ENDPOINT=https://logs.<region code>.amazonaws.com
ROTEL_EXPORTER_LOGS_CUSTOM_HEADERS="x-aws-log-group=<log group>,x-aws-log-stream=<log stream>"
ROTEL_EXPORTER_LOGS_AUTHENTICATOR=sigv4auth
ROTEL_EXPORTERS_LOGS=logs
note

To send OTLP logs to Cloudwatch you must create a log group and log stream. Exporting will fail if these do not exist ahead of time and they are not created by default.