OTel trace source

The otel_trace_source is a source for the OpenTelemetry Collector. The following table describes options you can use to configure the otel_trace_source source.

Configuration

You can configure the otel_trace_source source with the following options.

Usage

To use the otel-metrics source, create the following pipeline.yaml file with otel_metrics_source as the source:

source:
  otel_trace_source:

If you want to use the OpenTelemetry format for your output, set the output_format to otel, as shown in the following example:

source:
  otel_trace_source:
    output_format: otel

Example

The following example shows Data Prepper ingesting OTLP traces over HTTPS using a PEM certificate and key with unframed HTTP at a custom path, accepting gzip-compressed payloads, preserving OpenTelemetry document structure, and indexing them into OpenSearch:

otel-traces-https:
  source:
    otel_trace_source:
      ssl: true
      sslKeyFile: /usr/share/data-prepper/certs/dp-key.pem
      sslKeyCertChainFile: /usr/share/data-prepper/certs/dp-cert.pem
      unframed_requests: true
      path: /ingest/${pipelineName}/v1/traces
      compression: gzip
      output_format: otel
      request_timeout: 15000
      health_check_service: true
      proto_reflection_service: true
  sink:
    - opensearch:
        hosts: ["https://opensearch:9200"]
        index: otel-traces-https
        username: admin
        password: admin_pass
        insecure: true

You can test the pipeline using the following command:

cat > /tmp/otel-trace3.json <<'JSON'
{
  "resourceSpans": [{
    "resource": {"attributes":[
      {"key":"service.name","value":{"stringValue":"billing"}},
      {"key":"service.version","value":{"stringValue":"2.1.0"}}
    ]},
    "scopeSpans": [{
      "scope": {"name":"manual-https"},
      "spans": [{
        "traceId": "1234567890abcdef1234567890abcdef",
        "spanId":  "feedfacecafebeef",
        "name": "PUT /invoice/42",
        "startTimeUnixNano": "1739999999000000000",
        "endTimeUnixNano":   "1740000000000000000",
        "attributes": [
          {"key":"region","value":{"stringValue":"eu-west-1"}},
          {"key":"retry.count","value":{"intValue":"1"}}
        ]
      }]
    }]
  }]
}
JSON

gzip -c /tmp/otel-trace3.json > /tmp/otel-trace3.json.gz

curl -s -X POST "https://localhost:21890/ingest/otel-traces-https/v1/traces" \
  -H 'Content-Type: application/json' \
  -H 'Content-Encoding: gzip' \
  --insecure \
  --data-binary @/tmp/otel-trace3.json.gz

The document stored in OpenSearch contains the following information:

{
  ...
  "hits": {
    "total": {
      "value": 1,
      "relation": "eq"
    },
    "max_score": 1,
    "hits": [
      {
        "_index": "otel-traces-https",
        "_id": "V_5RBpoBqZ1V_u-TvYXf",
        "_score": 1,
        "_source": {
          "traceId": "d76df8e7aefcf7469b71d79fd76df8e7aefcf7469b71d79f",
          "droppedLinksCount": 0,
          "instrumentationScope": {
            "name": "manual-https",
            "droppedAttributesCount": 0
          },
          "resource": {
            "schemaUrl": "",
            "attributes": {
              "service.name": "billing",
              "service.version": "2.1.0"
            },
            "droppedAttributesCount": 0
          },
          "kind": "SPAN_KIND_UNSPECIFIED",
          "droppedEventsCount": 0,
          "flags": 0,
          "parentSpanId": "",
          "schemaUrl": "",
          "spanId": "7de79d7da71e71a7de6de79f",
          "traceState": "",
          "name": "PUT /invoice/42",
          "startTime": "2025-02-19T21:19:59Z",
          "attributes": {
            "retry.count": 1,
            "region": "eu-west-1"
          },
          "links": [],
          "endTime": "2025-02-19T21:20:00Z",
          "droppedAttributesCount": 0,
          "durationInNanos": 1000000000,
          "events": [],
          "status": {
            "code": 0,
            "message": ""
          }
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Metrics

The otel_trace_source source includes the following metrics.

Counters

• requestTimeouts: Measures the total number of requests that time out.
• requestsReceived: Measures the total number of requests received by the otel_trace source.
• successRequests: Measures the total number of requests successfully processed by the otel_trace source plugin.
• badRequests: Measures the total number of requests with an invalid format processed by the otel_trace source plugin.
• requestsTooLarge: Measures the total number of requests whose number of spans exceeds the buffer capacity.
• internalServerError: Measures the total number of requests processed by the otel_trace source with a custom exception type.

Timers

• requestProcessDuration: Measures the latency of requests processed by the otel_trace source plugin in seconds.

Distribution summaries

• payloadSize: Measures the incoming request payload size distribution in bytes.