I've successfully implemented an endpoint in C# to send OpenTelemetry messages. However, I now need guidance on configuring the remaining components of the system. Specifically, I believe I need to set up an OpenTelemetry collector to gather metrics, and subsequently, I'll configure Grafana and Prometheus to visualize and monitor this collected data.
Is my understanding accurate in that an OpenTelemetry collector will be responsible for fetching metrics, with Grafana or Prometheus serving as the tools for visualizing and analyzing this data?
The understanding is generally correct. OpenTelemetry Collector is the tool to connect telemetry data(signals) producers with telemetry data consumers. The primary data protocol and data model supported by this OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline engine is OTLP (OpenTelemetry protocol). In your scenario, you need an OTLP receiver to accept data from your C# app. You need a Prometheus exporter to expose the data to Prometheus. Then you can configure your Prometheus to read the data from the Prometheus endpoint of your OpenTelemetry Collector, and configure your Grafana to read data from your Prometheus.
The configuration file of your OpenTelemetry Collector looks roughly like this:
receivers:
otlp:
protocols:
grpc:
http:
cors:
allowed_origins:
- "http://*"
- "https://*"
exporters:
prometheus:
endpoint: "0.0.0.0:9464"
processors:
batch:
service:
pipelines:
metrics:
receivers: [otlp]
processors: [batch]
exporters: [prometheus]
Note: You can also enable Prometheus to receive OTLP data directly. I means to set up a built-in OTLP receiver inside Prometheus. Then you can just use the default otlp exporter of your OpenTelemetry Collector to send metrics to Prometheus directly.
exporters:
otlphttp/prometheus:
endpoint: http://my-otel-demo-prometheus-server:9090/api/v1/otlp
tls:
insecure: true