Caution
Grafana Alloy is the new name for our distribution of the OTel collector. Grafana Agent has been deprecated and is in Long-Term Support (LTS) through October 31, 2025. Grafana Agent will reach an End-of-Life (EOL) on November 1, 2025. Read more about why we recommend migrating to Grafana Alloy.
Important: This documentation is about an older version. It's relevant only to the release noted, many of the features and functions have been updated or replaced. Please view the current version.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
BETA: This is a beta component. Beta components are subject to breaking changes, and may be replaced with equivalent functionality that cover the same use case.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
accepts logs and traces from other otelcol
components
and writes them over the network using the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) protocol.
NOTE:
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
is a wrapper over the upstream OpenTelemetry Collectorloadbalancing
exporter. Bug reports or feature requests will be redirected to the upstream repository, if necessary.
Multiple otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
components can be specified by giving them
different labels.
The decision which backend to use depends on the trace ID or the service name. The backend load doesn’t influence the choice. Even though this load-balancer won’t do round-robin balancing of the batches, the load distribution should be very similar among backends, with a standard deviation under 5% at the current configuration.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
is especially useful for backends configured with tail-based samplers
which choose a backend based on the view of the full trace.
When a list of backends is updated, some of the signals will be rerouted to different backends. Around R/N of the “routes” will be rerouted differently, where:
- A “route” is either a trace ID or a service name mapped to a certain backend.
- “R” is the total number of routes.
- “N” is the total number of backends.
This should be stable enough for most cases, and the larger the number of backends, the less disruption it should cause.
Usage
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "LABEL" {
resolver {
...
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {}
}
}
}
Arguments
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
supports the following arguments:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
routing_key | string | Routing strategy for load balancing. | "traceID" | no |
The routing_key
attribute determines how to route signals across endpoints. Its value could be one of the following:
"service"
: spans with the sameservice.name
will be exported to the same backend. This is useful when using processors like the span metrics, so all spans for each service are sent to consistent Agent instances for metric collection. Otherwise, metrics for the same services would be sent to different Agents, making aggregations inaccurate."traceID"
: spans belonging to the same traceID will be exported to the same backend.
Blocks
The following blocks are supported inside the definition of
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
:
Hierarchy | Block | Description | Required |
---|---|---|---|
resolver | resolver | Configures discovering the endpoints to export to. | yes |
resolver > static | static | Static list of endpoints to export to. | no |
resolver > dns | dns | DNS-sourced list of endpoints to export to. | no |
resolver > kubernetes | kubernetes | Kubernetes-sourced list of endpoints to export to. | no |
protocol | protocol | Protocol settings. Only OTLP is supported at the moment. | no |
protocol > otlp | otlp | Configures an OTLP exporter. | no |
protocol > otlp > client | client | Configures the exporter gRPC client. | no |
protocol > otlp > client > tls | tls | Configures TLS for the gRPC client. | no |
protocol > otlp > client > keepalive | keepalive | Configures keepalive settings for the gRPC client. | no |
protocol > otlp > queue | queue | Configures batching of data before sending. | no |
protocol > otlp > retry | retry | Configures retry mechanism for failed requests. | no |
debug_metrics | debug_metrics | Configures the metrics that this component generates to monitor its state. | no |
The >
symbol indicates deeper levels of nesting. For example, resolver > static
refers to a static
block defined inside a resolver
block.
resolver block
The resolver
block configures how to retrieve the endpoint to which this exporter will send data.
Inside the resolver
block, either the dns block or the static block
should be specified. If both dns
and static
are specified, dns
takes precedence.
static block
The static
block configures a list of endpoints which this exporter will send data to.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
hostnames | list(string) | List of endpoints to export to. | yes |
dns block
The dns
block periodically resolves an IP address via the DNS hostname
attribute. This IP address
and the port specified via the port
attribute will then be used by the gRPC exporter
as the endpoint to which to export data to.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
hostname | string | DNS hostname to resolve. | yes | |
interval | duration | Resolver interval. | "5s" | no |
timeout | duration | Resolver timeout. | "1s" | no |
port | string | Port to be used with the IP addresses resolved from the DNS hostname. | "4317" | no |
kubernetes block
You can use the kubernetes
block to load balance across the pods of a Kubernetes service.
The Kubernetes API notifies Grafana Agent Flow whenever a new pod is added or removed from the service.
The kubernetes
resolver has a much faster response time than the dns
resolver because it doesn’t require polling.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
service | string | Kubernetes service to resolve. | yes | |
ports | list(number) | Ports to use with the IP addresses resolved from service . | [4317] | no |
If no namespace is specified inside service
, an attempt will be made to infer the namespace for this Agent.
If this fails, the default
namespace will be used.
Each of the ports listed in ports
will be used with each of the IPs resolved from service
.
The “get”, “list”, and “watch” roles must be granted in Kubernetes for the resolver to work.
protocol block
The protocol
block configures protocol-related settings for exporting.
At the moment only the OTLP protocol is supported.
otlp block
The otlp
block configures OTLP-related settings for exporting.
client block
The client
block configures the gRPC client used by the component.
The endpoints used by the client block are the ones from the resolver
block
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
compression | string | Compression mechanism to use for requests. | "gzip" | no |
read_buffer_size | string | Size of the read buffer the gRPC client to use for reading server responses. | no | |
write_buffer_size | string | Size of the write buffer the gRPC client to use for writing requests. | "512KiB" | no |
wait_for_ready | boolean | Waits for gRPC connection to be in the READY state before sending data. | false | no |
headers | map(string) | Additional headers to send with the request. | {} | no |
balancer_name | string | Which gRPC client-side load balancer to use for requests. | pick_first | no |
authority | string | Overrides the default :authority header in gRPC requests from the gRPC client. | no | |
auth | capsule(otelcol.Handler) | Handler from an otelcol.auth component to use for authenticating requests. | no |
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 supported values for balancer_name
are listed in the gRPC documentation on Load balancing:
pick_first
: Tries to connect to the first address, uses it for all RPCs if it connects, or tries the next address if it fails (and keeps doing that until one connection is successful). Because of this, all the RPCs will be sent to the same backend.round_robin
: Connects to all the addresses it sees and sends an RPC to each backend one at a time in order. For example, the first RPC is sent to backend-1, the second RPC is sent to backend-2, and the third RPC is sent to backend-1.
The :authority
header in gRPC specifies the host to which the request is being sent.
It’s similar to the Host
header in HTTP requests.
By default, the value for :authority
is derived from the endpoint URL used for the gRPC call.
Overriding :authority
could be useful when routing traffic using a proxy like Envoy, which makes routing decisions based on the value of the :authority
header.
You can configure an HTTP proxy with 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.loadbalancing
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:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
ca_file | string | Path to the CA file. | no | |
ca_pem | string | CA PEM-encoded text to validate the server with. | no | |
cert_file | string | Path to the TLS certificate. | no | |
cert_pem | string | Certificate PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
insecure_skip_verify | boolean | Ignores insecure server TLS certificates. | no | |
include_system_ca_certs_pool | boolean | Whether to load the system certificate authorities pool alongside the certificate authority. | false | no |
insecure | boolean | Disables TLS when connecting to the configured server. | no | |
key_file | string | Path to the TLS certificate key. | no | |
key_pem | secret | Key PEM-encoded text for client authentication. | no | |
max_version | string | Maximum acceptable TLS version for connections. | "TLS 1.3" | no |
min_version | string | Minimum acceptable TLS version for connections. | "TLS 1.2" | no |
cipher_suites | list(string) | A list of TLS cipher suites that the TLS transport can use. | [] | no |
reload_interval | duration | The duration after which the certificate is reloaded. | "0s" | no |
server_name | string | Verifies the hostname of server certificates when set. | no |
If the server doesn’t support TLS, you must set the insecure
argument 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 never reloaded.
The following pairs of arguments are mutually exclusive and can’t both be set simultaneously:
ca_pem
andca_file
cert_pem
andcert_file
key_pem
andkey_file
If cipher_suites
is left blank, a safe default list is used.
See the Go TLS documentation for a list of supported cipher suites.
keepalive block
The keepalive
block configures keepalive settings for gRPC client
connections.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
ping_wait | duration | How often to ping the server after no activity. | no | |
ping_response_timeout | duration | Time to wait before closing inactive connections if the server does not respond to a ping. | no | |
ping_without_stream | boolean | Send pings even if there is no active stream request. | no |
queue block
The queue
block configures an in-memory buffer of batches before data is sent
to the gRPC server.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
enabled | boolean | Enables an in-memory buffer before sending data to the client. | true | no |
num_consumers | number | Number of readers to send batches written to the queue in parallel. | 10 | no |
queue_size | number | Maximum number of unwritten batches allowed in the queue at the same time. | 1000 | no |
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 doesn’t exceed the configured queue_size
.
queue_size
determines how long an endpoint outage is tolerated.
Assuming 100 requests/second, the default queue size 1000
provides about 10 seconds of outage tolerance.
To calculate the correct value for queue_size
, multiply the average number of outgoing requests per second by the time in seconds that outages are tolerated. A very high value can cause Out Of Memory (OOM) kills.
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 block
The retry
block configures how failed requests to the gRPC server are
retried.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
enabled | boolean | Enables retrying failed requests. | true | no |
initial_interval | duration | Initial time to wait before retrying a failed request. | "5s" | no |
max_elapsed_time | duration | Maximum time to wait before discarding a failed batch. | "5m" | no |
max_interval | duration | Maximum time to wait between retries. | "30s" | no |
multiplier | number | Factor to grow wait time before retrying. | 1.5 | no |
randomization_factor | number | Factor to randomize wait time before retrying. | 0.5 | no |
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 by the factor specified by the multiplier
argument, which must be greater than 1.0
.
The max_interval
argument specifies the upper bound of how long to wait between retries.
The randomization_factor
argument is useful for adding jitter between retrying agents.
If randomization_factor
is greater than 0
, the wait time before retries is multiplied by a random factor in the range [ I - randomization_factor * I, I + randomization_factor * I]
, where I
is the current interval.
If a batch hasn’t been 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.
debug_metrics block
The debug_metrics
block configures the metrics that this component generates to monitor its state.
The following arguments are supported:
Name | Type | Description | Default | Required |
---|---|---|---|---|
disable_high_cardinality_metrics | boolean | Whether to disable certain high cardinality metrics. | true | no |
disable_high_cardinality_metrics
is the Grafana Agent equivalent to the telemetry.disableHighCardinalityMetrics
feature gate in the OpenTelemetry Collector.
It removes attributes that could cause high cardinality metrics.
For example, attributes with IP addresses and port numbers in metrics about HTTP and gRPC connections are removed.
Exported fields
The following fields are exported and can be referenced by other components:
Name | Type | Description |
---|---|---|
input | otelcol.Consumer | A value that other components can use to send telemetry data to. |
input
accepts otelcol.Consumer
OTLP-formatted data for telemetry signals of these types:
- logs
- traces
Choose a load balancing strategy
Different Grafana Agent Flow components require different load-balancing strategies.
The use of otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
is only necessary for stateful Flow components.
otelcol.processor.tail_sampling
All spans for a given trace ID must go to the same tail sampling Grafana Agent instance.
- This can be done by configuring
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
withrouting_key = "traceID"
. - If you do not configure
routing_key = "traceID"
, the sampling decision may be incorrect. The tail sampler must have a full view of the trace when making a sampling decision. For example, arate_limiting
tail sampling strategy may incorrectly pass through more spans than expected if the spans for the same trace are spread out to more than one Grafana Agent Flow instance.
otelcol.connector.spanmetrics
All spans for a given service.name
must go to the same spanmetrics Grafana Agent.
- This can be done by configuring
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
withrouting_key = "service"
. - If you do not configure
routing_key = "service"
, metrics generated from spans might be incorrect. For example, if similar spans for the sameservice.name
end up on different Grafana Agent instances, the two Grafana Agents will have identical metric series for calculating span latency, errors, and number of requests. When both Grafana Agent instances attempt to write the metrics to a database such as Mimir, the series may clash with each other. At best, this will lead to an error in Grafana Agent and a rejected write to the metrics database. At worst, it could lead to inaccurate data due to overlapping samples for the metric series.
However, there are ways to scale otelcol.connector.spanmetrics
without the need for a load balancer:
- Each Grafana Agent could add an attribute such as
collector.id
in order to make its series unique. Then, for example, you could use asum by
PromQL query to aggregate the metrics from different Grafana Agents. Unfortunately, an extracollector.id
attribute has a downside that the metrics stored in the database will have higher cardinality . - Spanmetrics could be generated in the backend database instead of in Grafana Agent. For example, span metrics can be generated in Grafana Cloud by the Tempo traces database.
otelcol.connector.servicegraph
It is challenging to scale otelcol.connector.servicegraph
over multiple Grafana Agent instances.
For otelcol.connector.servicegraph
to work correctly, each “client” span must be paired with a “server” span to calculate metrics such as span duration.
If a “client” span goes to one Grafana Agent, but a “server” span goes to another Grafana Agent, then no single Grafana Agent will be able to pair the spans and a metric won’t be generated.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
can solve this problem partially if it is configured with routing_key = "traceID"
.
Each Grafana Agent will then be able to calculate a service graph for each “client”/“server” pair in a trace.
It is possible to have a span with similar “server”/“client” values in a different trace, processed by another Grafana Agent.
If two different Grafana Agent instances process similar “server”/“client” spans, they will generate the same service graph metric series.
If the series from two Grafana Agent are the same, this will lead to issues when writing them to the backend database.
You could differentiate the series by adding an attribute such as "collector.id"
.
The series from different Grafana Agents can be aggregated using PromQL queries on the backed metrics database.
If the metrics are stored in Grafana Mimir, cardinality issues due to "collector.id"
labels can be solved using Adaptive Metrics.
A simpler, more scalable alternative to generating service graph metrics in Grafana Agent is to generate them entirely in the backend database. For example, service graphs can be generated in Grafana Cloud by the Tempo traces database.
Mixing stateful components
Different Grafana Agent Flow components may require a different routing_key
for otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
.
For example, otelcol.processor.tail_sampling
requires routing_key = "traceID"
whereas otelcol.connector.spanmetrics
requires routing_key = "service"
.
To load balance both types of components, two different sets of load balancers have to be set up:
- One set of
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
withrouting_key = "traceID"
, sending spans to Grafana Agents doing tail sampling and no span metrics. - Another set of
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
withrouting_key = "service"
, sending spans to Grafana Agents doing span metrics and no service graphs.
Unfortunately, this can also lead to side effects.
For example, if otelcol.connector.spanmetrics
is configured to generate exemplars, the tail sampling Grafana Agents might drop the trace that the exemplar points to.
There is no coordination between the tail sampling Grafana Agents and the span metrics Grafana Agents to make sure trace IDs for exemplars are kept.
Component health
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
is only reported as unhealthy if given an invalid
configuration.
Debug information
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
does not expose any component-specific debug
information.
Examples
Static resolver
This example accepts OTLP logs and traces over gRPC. It then sends them in a load-balanced way to “localhost:55690” or “localhost:55700”.
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
grpc {}
output {
traces = [otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing.default.input]
logs = [otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing.default.input]
}
}
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "default" {
resolver {
static {
hostnames = ["localhost:55690", "localhost:55700"]
}
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {}
}
}
}
DNS resolver
When configured with a dns
resolver, otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
will do a DNS lookup
on regular intervals. Spans are exported to the addresses the DNS lookup returned.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "default" {
resolver {
dns {
hostname = "grafana-agent-traces-sampling.grafana-cloud-monitoring.svc.cluster.local"
port = "34621"
interval = "5s"
timeout = "1s"
}
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {}
}
}
}
The following example shows a Kubernetes configuration that configures two sets of Grafana Agents:
- A pool of load-balancer Grafana Agents:
- Spans are received from instrumented applications via
otelcol.receiver.otlp
- Spans are exported via
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
.
- Spans are received from instrumented applications via
- A pool of sampling Grafana Agents:
- The sampling Grafana Agents run behind a headless service to enable the load-balancer Grafana Agents to discover them.
- Spans are received from the load-balancer Grafana Agents via
otelcol.receiver.otlp
- Traces are sampled via
otelcol.processor.tail_sampling
. - The traces are exported via
otelcol.exporter.otlp
to an OTLP-compatible database such as Tempo.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: grafana-cloud-monitoring
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: k6-trace-generator
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 1
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: k6-trace-generator
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: k6-trace-generator
spec:
containers:
- env:
- name: ENDPOINT
value: agent-traces-lb.grafana-cloud-monitoring.svc.cluster.local:9411
image: ghcr.io/grafana/xk6-client-tracing:v0.0.2
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: k6-trace-generator
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: agent-traces-lb
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
clusterIP: None
ports:
- name: agent-traces-otlp-grpc
port: 9411
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 9411
selector:
name: agent-traces-lb
type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: agent-traces-lb
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 1
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: agent-traces-lb
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: agent-traces-lb
spec:
containers:
- args:
- run
- /etc/agent/agent_lb.river
command:
- /bin/grafana-agent
env:
- name: AGENT_MODE
value: flow
image: grafana/agent:v0.38.0
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: agent-traces
ports:
- containerPort: 9411
name: otlp-grpc
protocol: TCP
- containerPort: 34621
name: agent-lb
protocol: TCP
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/agent
name: agent-traces
volumes:
- configMap:
name: agent-traces
name: agent-traces
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: agent-traces-sampling
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
clusterIP: None
ports:
- name: agent-lb
port: 34621
protocol: TCP
targetPort: agent-lb
selector:
name: agent-traces-sampling
type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: agent-traces-sampling
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 3
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: agent-traces-sampling
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: agent-traces-sampling
spec:
containers:
- args:
- run
- /etc/agent/agent_sampling.river
command:
- /bin/grafana-agent
env:
- name: AGENT_MODE
value: flow
image: grafana/agent:v0.38.0
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: agent-traces
ports:
- containerPort: 9411
name: otlp-grpc
protocol: TCP
- containerPort: 34621
name: agent-lb
protocol: TCP
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/agent
name: agent-traces
volumes:
- configMap:
name: agent-traces
name: agent-traces
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: agent-traces
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
data:
agent_lb.river: |
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
grpc {
endpoint = "0.0.0.0:9411"
}
output {
traces = [otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing.default.input,otelcol.exporter.logging.default.input]
}
}
otelcol.exporter.logging "default" {
verbosity = "detailed"
}
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "default" {
resolver {
dns {
hostname = "agent-traces-sampling.grafana-cloud-monitoring.svc.cluster.local"
port = "34621"
}
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {
tls {
insecure = true
}
}
}
}
}
agent_sampling.river: |
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
grpc {
endpoint = "0.0.0.0:34621"
}
output {
traces = [otelcol.exporter.otlp.default.input,otelcol.exporter.logging.default.input]
}
}
otelcol.exporter.logging "default" {
verbosity = "detailed"
}
otelcol.exporter.otlp "default" {
client {
endpoint = "tempo-prod-06-prod-gb-south-0.grafana.net:443"
auth = otelcol.auth.basic.creds.handler
}
}
otelcol.auth.basic "creds" {
username = "111111"
password = "pass"
}
You must fill in the correct OTLP credentials prior to running the example. You can use k3d to start the example:
k3d cluster create grafana-agent-lb-test
kubectl apply -f kubernetes_config.yaml
To delete the cluster, run:
k3d cluster delete grafana-agent-lb-test
Kubernetes resolver
When you configure otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
with a kubernetes
resolver, the Kubernetes API notifies Grafana Agent Flow whenever a new pod is added or removed from the service.
Spans are exported to the addresses from the Kubernetes API, combined with all the possible ports
.
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "default" {
resolver {
kubernetes {
service = "grafana-agent-traces-headless"
ports = [ 34621 ]
}
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {}
}
}
}
The following example shows a Kubernetes configuration that sets up two sets of Grafana Agents:
- A pool of load-balancer Grafana Agents:
- Spans are received from instrumented applications via
otelcol.receiver.otlp
- Spans are exported via
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
. - The load-balancer Grafana Agents will get notified by the Kubernetes API any time a pod is added or removed from the pool of sampling Grafana Agents.
- Spans are received from instrumented applications via
- A pool of sampling Grafana Agents:
- The sampling Grafana Agents do not need to run behind a headless service.
- Spans are received from the load-balancer Grafana Agents via
otelcol.receiver.otlp
- Traces are sampled via
otelcol.processor.tail_sampling
. - The traces are exported via
otelcol.exporter.otlp
to a an OTLP-compatible database such as Tempo.
apiVersion: v1
kind: Namespace
metadata:
name: grafana-cloud-monitoring
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
name: agent-traces
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: Role
metadata:
name: agent-traces-role
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
rules:
- apiGroups:
- ""
resources:
- endpoints
verbs:
- list
- watch
- get
---
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: RoleBinding
metadata:
name: agent-traces-rolebinding
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
roleRef:
apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
kind: Role
name: agent-traces-role
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
name: agent-traces
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: k6-trace-generator
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 1
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: k6-trace-generator
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: k6-trace-generator
spec:
containers:
- env:
- name: ENDPOINT
value: agent-traces-lb.grafana-cloud-monitoring.svc.cluster.local:9411
image: ghcr.io/grafana/xk6-client-tracing:v0.0.2
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: k6-trace-generator
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: agent-traces-lb
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
clusterIP: None
ports:
- name: agent-traces-otlp-grpc
port: 9411
protocol: TCP
targetPort: 9411
selector:
name: agent-traces-lb
type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: agent-traces-lb
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 1
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: agent-traces-lb
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: agent-traces-lb
spec:
containers:
- args:
- run
- /etc/agent/agent_lb.river
command:
- /bin/grafana-agent
env:
- name: AGENT_MODE
value: flow
image: grafana/agent:v0.38.0
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: agent-traces
ports:
- containerPort: 9411
name: otlp-grpc
protocol: TCP
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/agent
name: agent-traces
serviceAccount: agent-traces
volumes:
- configMap:
name: agent-traces
name: agent-traces
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: Service
metadata:
name: agent-traces-sampling
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
ports:
- name: agent-lb
port: 34621
protocol: TCP
targetPort: agent-lb
selector:
name: agent-traces-sampling
type: ClusterIP
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: agent-traces-sampling
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
spec:
minReadySeconds: 10
replicas: 3
revisionHistoryLimit: 1
selector:
matchLabels:
name: agent-traces-sampling
template:
metadata:
labels:
name: agent-traces-sampling
spec:
containers:
- args:
- run
- /etc/agent/agent_sampling.river
command:
- /bin/grafana-agent
env:
- name: AGENT_MODE
value: flow
image: grafana/agent:v0.38.0
imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
name: agent-traces
ports:
- containerPort: 34621
name: agent-lb
protocol: TCP
volumeMounts:
- mountPath: /etc/agent
name: agent-traces
volumes:
- configMap:
name: agent-traces
name: agent-traces
---
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
name: agent-traces
namespace: grafana-cloud-monitoring
data:
agent_lb.river: |
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
grpc {
endpoint = "0.0.0.0:9411"
}
output {
traces = [otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing.default.input,otelcol.exporter.logging.default.input]
}
}
otelcol.exporter.logging "default" {
verbosity = "detailed"
}
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing "default" {
resolver {
kubernetes {
service = "agent-traces-sampling"
ports = ["34621"]
}
}
protocol {
otlp {
client {
tls {
insecure = true
}
}
}
}
}
agent_sampling.river: |
otelcol.receiver.otlp "default" {
grpc {
endpoint = "0.0.0.0:34621"
}
output {
traces = [otelcol.exporter.otlp.default.input,otelcol.exporter.logging.default.input]
}
}
otelcol.exporter.logging "default" {
verbosity = "detailed"
}
otelcol.exporter.otlp "default" {
client {
endpoint = "tempo-prod-06-prod-gb-south-0.grafana.net:443"
auth = otelcol.auth.basic.creds.handler
}
}
otelcol.auth.basic "creds" {
username = "111111"
password = "pass"
}
You must fill in the correct OTLP credentials prior to running the example. You can use k3d to start the example:
k3d cluster create grafana-agent-lb-test
kubectl apply -f kubernetes_config.yaml
To delete the cluster, run:
k3d cluster delete grafana-agent-lb-test
Compatible components
otelcol.exporter.loadbalancing
has exports that can be consumed by the following components:
- Components that consume OpenTelemetry
otelcol.Consumer
Note
Connecting some components may not be sensible or components may require further configuration to make the connection work correctly. Refer to the linked documentation for more details.