Collector¶

Neblic uses a custom build of the OpenTelemetry Collector. The OpenTelemetry Collector is an amazing modular collector built by the OpenTelemetry community that can be customized by adding components at build time. Neblic's Control Plane server is packaged in an OpenTelemetry Collector extension so that it can be bundled into a custom OpenTelemetry Collector build using the OpenTelemetry Collector Builder (ocb).

An OpenTelemtry Collector with the Control Plane server built-in is provided in each Neblic Platform release.

• Binaries can be found on the GitHub releases page.
• Containers are available on the GitHub packages page.

You can see what other components are included in its ocb configuration file (see Appendix A). If you want to build your own OpenTelemetry Collector with the Neblic Control Plane server and additional components, you can check this page.

Installation¶

The recommended approach is to deploy the Collector using the provided container. You can find the latest release in here.

Configuration¶

The collector is configured using a YAML configuration file. However, if you are using a container, you can configure most options using environment variables. To use a custom configuration file run use the --config flag.

otelcol --config /path/to/config.yaml

Here you can find an up-to-date complete configuration file that you can use as a reference, the reference configuration file is also the configuration that is shipped with the container. There are three main sections, configuring the Data Plane, configuring the Control Plane, and configuring the Data Samples exporter.

Data Plane¶

The Data Plane uses the standard OTLP logging receiver. Neblic doesn't require any special configuration, so it is enough to simply enable it by setting up an endpoint.

Neblic also provides a custom Bearer authenticator that can be used to authenticate Sampler connections when TLS is enabled. You will only need it if you want to connect using a Bearer token to authenticate with the Data Plane server.

Control plane¶

See the annotated reference documentation (extensions.neblic section) to see what options are required to configure the Control Plane server.

Exporter¶

Loki exporter¶

In addition to configuring and enabling the Loki exporter, you should add a resource attributes process to set the name of the Sampler as a Loki label. This will create an index that will allow you to efficiently explore Data Samples in Loki. You can read more about why this is necessary on the stores documentation page.

Other exporters¶

Refer to your exporter documentation to learn how to configure it to save Data Samples in your preferred store.

Appendix A:¶

# NOTE: the builder is expected to be run from the repo root

dist:
  name: otelcol
  otelcol_version: 0.71.0
  output_path: ./dist/otelcol/build/

exporters:
  - gomod: go.opentelemetry.io/collector/exporter/loggingexporter v0.71.0
  - gomod: go.opentelemetry.io/collector/exporter/otlpexporter v0.71.0
  - gomod: github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/exporter/lokiexporter v0.71.0
processors:
  - gomod: github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/processor/resourceprocessor v0.71.0
receivers:
  - gomod: go.opentelemetry.io/collector/receiver/otlpreceiver v0.71.0
extensions:
  - import: github.com/neblic/platform/controlplane/server/otelcolext
    gomod: github.com/neblic/platform v0.0.0
    path: .
  - import: github.com/neblic/platform/controlplane/server/otelcolext/bearerauthextension
    gomod: github.com/neblic/platform v0.0.0
    path: .
  - gomod: github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/extension/healthcheckextension v0.71.0