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Documentation Grafana Agent Flow mode Reference Components reference otelcol.exporter.otlp

otelcol.exporter.otlp

otelcol.exporter.otlp accepts telemetry data from other otelcol components and writes them over the network using the OTLP gRPC protocol.

NOTE: otelcol.exporter.otlp is a wrapper over the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector otlp exporter. Bug reports or feature requests will be redirected to the upstream repository, if necessary.

Multiple otelcol.exporter.otlp components can be specified by giving them different labels.

Usage

river Copy

otelcol.exporter.otlp "LABEL" {
  client {
    endpoint = "HOST:PORT"
  }
}

Arguments

otelcol.exporter.otlp supports the following arguments:

Blocks

The following blocks are supported inside the definition of otelcol.exporter.otlp:

The > symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example, client > tls refers to a tls block defined inside a client block.

client block

The client block configures the gRPC client used by the component.

The following arguments are supported:

By default, requests are compressed with gzip. The compression argument controls which compression mechanism to use. Supported strings are:

• "gzip"
• "zlib"
• "deflate"
• "snappy"
• "zstd"

If compression is set to "none" or an empty string "", no compression is used.

The balancer_name argument controls what client-side load balancing mechanism to use. See the gRPC documentation on Load balancing for more information. When unspecified, pick_first is used.

An HTTP proxy can be configured through the following environment variables:

• HTTPS_PROXY
• NO_PROXY

The HTTPS_PROXY environment variable specifies a URL to use for proxying requests. Connections to the proxy are established via the HTTP CONNECT method.

The NO_PROXY environment variable is an optional list of comma-separated hostnames for which the HTTPS proxy should not be used. Each hostname can be provided as an IP address (1.2.3.4), an IP address in CIDR notation (1.2.3.4/8), a domain name (example.com), or *. A domain name matches that domain and all subdomains. A domain name with a leading “.” (.example.com) matches subdomains only. NO_PROXY is only read when HTTPS_PROXY is set.

Because otelcol.exporter.otlp uses gRPC, the configured proxy server must be able to handle and proxy HTTP/2 traffic.

tls block

The tls block configures TLS settings used for the connection to the gRPC server.

The following arguments are supported:

If the server doesn’t support TLS, the tls block must be provided with the insecure argument set to true. To disable tls for connections to the server, set the insecure argument to true.

If reload_interval is set to "0s", the certificate will never be reloaded.

The following pairs of arguments are mutually exclusive and cannot both be set simultaneously:

• ca_pem and ca_file
• cert_pem and cert_file
• key_pem and key_file

NOTE: otelcol.exporter.otlp uses gRPC, which does not allow you to send sensitive credentials (like auth) over insecure channels. Sending sensitive credentials over insecure non-TLS connections is supported by non-gRPC exporters such as otelcol.exporter.otlphttp.

keepalive block

The keepalive block configures keepalive settings for gRPC client connections.

The following arguments are supported:

sending_queue block

The sending_queue block configures an in-memory buffer of batches before data is sent to the gRPC server.

The following arguments are supported:

When enabled is true, data is first written to an in-memory buffer before sending it to the configured server. Batches sent to the component’s input exported field are added to the buffer as long as the number of unsent batches does not exceed the configured queue_size.

queue_size is used to determine how long an endpoint outage is tolerated for. Assuming 100 requests/second, the default queue size 5000 provides about 50 seconds of outage tolerance. To calculate the correct value for queue_size, multiply the average number of outgoing requests per second by the amount of time in seconds that outages should be tolerated for.

The num_consumers argument controls how many readers read from the buffer and send data in parallel. Larger values of num_consumers allow data to be sent more quickly at the expense of increased network traffic.

retry_on_failure block

The retry_on_failure block configures how failed requests to the gRPC server are retried.

The following arguments are supported:

When enabled is true, failed batches are retried after a given interval. The initial_interval argument specifies how long to wait before the first retry attempt. If requests continue to fail, the time to wait before retrying increases exponentially. The max_interval argument specifies the upper bound of how long to wait between retries.

If a batch has not sent successfully, it is discarded after the time specified by max_elapsed_time elapses. If max_elapsed_time is set to "0s", failed requests are retried forever until they succeed.

Exported fields

The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:

input accepts otelcol.Consumer data for any telemetry signal (metrics, logs, or traces).

Component health

otelcol.exporter.otlp is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid configuration.

Debug information

otelcol.exporter.otlp does not expose any component-specific debug information.

Examples

The following examples show you how to create an exporter to send data to different destinations.

Send data to a local Tempo instance

You can create an exporter that sends your data to a local Grafana Tempo instance without TLS:

river Copy

otelcol.exporter.otlp "tempo" {
    client {
        endpoint = "tempo:4317"
        tls {
            insecure             = true
            insecure_skip_verify = true
        }
    }
}

Send data to a managed service

You can create an otlp exporter that sends your data to a managed service, for example, Grafana Cloud. The Tempo username and Grafana Cloud API Key are injected in this example through environment variables.

river Copy

otelcol.exporter.otlp "grafana_cloud_tempo" {
    client {
        endpoint = "https://tempo-xxx.grafana.net/tempo"
        auth     = otelcol.auth.basic.grafana_cloud_tempo.handler
    }
}
otelcol.auth.basic "grafana_cloud_tempo" {
    username = env("TEMPO_USERNAME")
    password = env("GRAFANA_CLOUD_API_KEY")
}