OpenTelemetry Collector Helm Chart

The helm chart installs OpenTelemetry Collector in kubernetes cluster.

Prerequisites

• Kubernetes 1.23+
• Helm 3.9+

Installing the Chart

Add OpenTelemetry Helm repository:

helm repo add open-telemetry https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts

To install the chart with the release name my-opentelemetry-collector, run the following command:

helm install my-opentelemetry-collector open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector

Upgrading

See UPGRADING.md.

Security Considerations

OpenTelemetry Collector recommends to bind receivers' servers to addresses that limit connections to authorized users. For this reason, by default the chart binds all the Collector's endpoints to the pod's IP.

More info is available in the Security Best Practices docummentation

Some care must be taken when using hostNetwork: true, as then OpenTelemetry Collector will listen on all the addresses in the host network namespace.

Configuration

Default configuration

By default this chart will deploy an OpenTelemetry Collector as daemonset with three pipelines (logs, metrics and traces) and logging exporter enabled by default. Besides daemonset (agent), it can be also installed as deployment.

Example: Install collector as a deployment, and do not run it as an agent.

mode: deployment

By default collector has the following receivers enabled:

• metrics: OTLP and prometheus. Prometheus is configured only for scraping collector's own metrics.
• traces: OTLP, zipkin and jaeger (thrift and grpc).
• logs: OTLP (to enable container logs, see Configuration for Kubernetes container logs).

There are two ways to configure collector pipelines, which can be used together as well.

Basic top level configuration

Default components can be removed with null. When changing a pipeline, you must explicitly list all the components that are in the pipeline, including any default components.

Example: Disable metrics and logging pipelines and non-otlp receivers:

config:
  receivers:
    jaeger: null
    prometheus: null
    zipkin: null
  service:
    pipelines:
      traces:
        receivers:
          - otlp
      metrics: null
      logs: null

Example: Add host metrics receiver:

mode: daemonset

presets:
  hostMetrics:
    enabled: true

Configuration for Kubernetes container logs

The collector can be used to collect logs sent to standard output by Kubernetes containers. This feature is disabled by default. It has the following requirements:

• It needs agent collector to be deployed.
• It requires the contrib version of the collector image.

To enable this feature, set the presets.logsCollection.enabled property to true. Here is an example values.yaml:

mode: daemonset

presets:
  logsCollection:
    enabled: true
    includeCollectorLogs: true

The way this feature works is it adds a filelog receiver on the logs pipeline. This receiver is preconfigured to read the files where Kubernetes container runtime writes all containers' console output to.

⚠️ Warning: Risk of looping the exported logs back into the receiver, causing "log explosion"

The container logs pipeline uses the logging console exporter by default. Paired with the default filelog receiver that receives all containers' console output, it is easy to accidentally feed the exported logs back into the receiver.

Also note that using the --log-level=debug option for the logging exporter causes it to output multiple lines per single received log, which when looped, would amplify the logs exponentially.

To prevent the looping, the default configuration of the receiver excludes logs from the collector's containers.

If you want to include the collector's logs, make sure to replace the logging exporter with an exporter that does not send logs to collector's standard output.

Here's an example values.yaml file that replaces the default logging exporter on the logs pipeline with an otlphttp exporter that sends the container logs to https://example.com:55681 endpoint. It also clears the filelog receiver's exclude property, for collector logs to be included in the pipeline.

mode: daemonset

presets:
  logsCollection:
    enabled: true
    includeCollectorLogs: true

config:
  exporters:
    otlphttp:
      endpoint: https://example.com:55681
  service:
    pipelines:
      logs:
        exporters:
          - otlphttp

Configuration for Kubernetes attributes processor

The collector can be configured to add Kubernetes metadata to logs, metrics and traces.

This feature is disabled by default. It has the following requirements:

• It requires k8sattributesprocessor processor to be included in the collector, such as contrib version of the collector image.

To enable this feature, set the presets.kubernetesAttributes.enabled property to true. Here is an example values.yaml:

mode: daemonset
presets:
  kubernetesAttributes:
    enabled: true

Configuration for Kubernetes Cluster Metrics

The collector can be configured to collects cluster-level metrics from the Kubernetes API server. A single instance of this receiver can be used to monitor a cluster.

This feature is disabled by default. It has the following requirements:

• It requires k8sclusterreceiver to be included in the collector, such as contrib version of the collector image.
• It requires statefulset or deployment mode with a signle replica.

To enable this feature, set the presets.clusterMetrics.enabled property to true.

Here is an example values.yaml:

mode: deployment
replicaCount: 1
presets:
  clusterMetrics:
    enabled: true

Configuration for retrieving Kubelet metrics

The collector can be configured to collect Kubelet metrics.

This feature is disabled by default. It has the following requirements:

• It requires kubeletstats receiver to be included in the collector, such as contrib version of the collector image.

To enable this feature, set the presets.kubeletMetrics.enabled property to true. Here is an example values.yaml:

mode: daemonset
presets:
  kubeletMetrics:
    enabled: true

CRDs

At this time, Prometheus CRDs are supported but other CRDs are not.

Other configuration options

The values.yaml file contains information about all other configuration options for this chart.

For more examples see Examples.