Documentation Beyla Configure Export data

Configure Beyla Prometheus and OpenTelemetry data export

Beyla can export OpenTelemetry metrics and traces to a OTLP endpoint.

To send metrics directly to the Grafana Cloud OpenTelemetry endpoint, see the Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint configuration.

Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint

YAML section: grafana.otlp

You can configure the component under the grafana.otlp section of your YAML configuration or via environment variables. You can configure Beyla to submit OpenTelemetry data to the Grafana Cloud OTEL endpoint using custom variables, allowing an easier setup of the endpoint and the authentication.

For more information on the Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint, refer to the Send data to the Grafana Cloud OTLP endpoint documentation.

For example:

YAML Copy

grafana:
  otlp:
    cloud_submit: ["metrics", "traces"]
    cloud_zone: "eu-west-23"
    cloud_instance_id: "12345"
    cloud_api_key: "abcde"

You can also use the standard OpenTelemetry variables to submit the metrics and traces to any standard OpenTelemetry endpoint, including Grafana Cloud.

Cloud zone configuration

If any of the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT, OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT or OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT variables are defined, they override the destination endpoint, and Beyla ignores the cloud_zone configuration option.

OpenTelemetry metrics exporter component

YAML section: otel_metrics_export

Enable the OpenTelemetry metrics export component by setting the endpoint attribute in your configuration file or via an environment variable, refer to metric export configuration options.

Configure the component under the otel_metrics_export section of your YAML configuration or via environment variables.

In addition to the configuration documented in this article, the component supports environment variables from the standard OpenTelemetry exporter configuration.

For example:

YAML Copy

otel_metrics_export:
  ttl: 5m
  endpoint: http://otelcol:4318
  protocol: grpc
  features: ["network", "network_inter_zone"]
  buckets:
    duration_histogram: [0, 1, 2]
  histogram_aggregation: base2_exponential_bucket_histogram

Metrics export protocol

If you don’t set a protocol Beyla sets the protocol as follows:

• grpc: if the port ends in 4317, for example 4317, 14317, or 24317.
• http/protobuf: if the port ends in 4318, for example 4318, 14318, or 24318.

Metrics export features

The Beyla metrics exporter can export the following metrics data groups for processes matching entries in the metrics discovery configuration.

• application: Application-level metrics
• application_span Application-level trace span metrics
• application_host Application-level host metrics for host based pricing
• application_service_graph: Application-level service graph metrics. It’s recommended to use a DNS for service discovery and to ensure the DNS names match the OpenTelemetry service names Beyla uses. In Kubernetes environments, the OpenTelemetry service name set by the service name discovery is the best choice for service graph metrics.
• application_process: Metrics about the processes that runs the instrumented application
• network: Network-level metrics, refer to the network metrics configuration documentation to learn more
• network_inter_zone: Network inter-zone metrics, refer to the network metrics configuration documentation to learn more

Metrics instrumentation

The list of instrumentation areas Beyla can collection data from:

• *: all instrumentation, if * is present Beyla ignores other values
• http: HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 application metrics
• grpc: gRPC application metrics
• sql: SQL database client call metrics
• redis: Redis client/server database metrics
• kafka: Kafka client/server message queue metrics
• mongodb: MongoDB client/server database metrics

For example, setting the instrumentations option to: http,grpc enables the collection of HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 and gRPC application metrics, and disables other instrumentation.

OpenTelemetry traces exporter component

YAML section: otel_traces_export

You can configure the component under the otel_traces_export section of your YAML configuration or via environment variables.

In addition to the configuration documented in this article, the component supports the environment variables from the standard OpenTelemetry exporter configuration.

YAML Copy

otel_traces_export:
  endpoint: http://jaeger:4317
  protocol: grpc
  instrumentations: ["http, "sql"]

Traces export protocol

If you don’t set a protocol Beyla sets the protocol as follows:

• grpc: if the port ends in 4317, for example 4317, 14317, or 24317.
• http/protobuf: if the port ends in 4318, for example 4318, 14318, or 24318.

Traces instrumentation

The list of instrumentation areas Beyla can collection data from:

• *: all instrumentation, if * is present Beyla ignores other values
• http: HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 application traces
• grpc: gRPC application traces
• sql: SQL database client call traces
• redis: Redis client/server database traces
• kafka: Kafka client/server message queue traces
• mongodb: MongoDB client/server database traces

For example, setting the instrumentations option to: http,grpc enables the collection of HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 and gRPC application traces, and disables other instrumentation.

Prometheus exporter component

YAML section: prometheus_export

You can configure the component under the prometheus_export section of your YAML configuration or via environment variables. This component opens an HTTP endpoint in the auto-instrumentation tool that allows any external scraper to pull metrics in Prometheus format. It is enabled if the port property is set.

YAML Copy

prometheus_export:
  port: 8999
  path: /metrics
  extra_resource_attributes: ["deployment_environment"]
  ttl: 1s
  buckets:
    request_size_histogram: [0, 10, 20, 22]
    response_size_histogram: [0, 10, 20, 22]
  features:
    - application
    - network
    - application_process
    - application_span
    - application_service_graph
  instrumentations: ["http, "sql"]

Prometheus extra resource attributes

Due to internal limitations of the Prometheus API client, Beyla needs to know beforehand which attributes are exposed for each metric. This would cause that some attributes that are discovered at runtime, during instrumentation, won’t be visible by default. For example, attributes defined on each application via Kubernetes annotations, or in the target application’s OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variable.

For example, an application defining the OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment=production as environment variable, the target_info{deployment.environment="production"} attribute would be visible by default if the metrics are exported via OpenTelemetry but not if they are exported via Prometheus.

To make deployment_environment visible in Prometheus, you need to add it to the extra_resource_attributes list.

Prometheus export features

The Prometheus metrics exporter can export the following metrics data groups:

• application: Application-level metrics
• application_span: Application-level trace span metrics
• application_host Application-level host metrics for host based pricing
• application_service_graph: Application-level service graph metrics. It’s recommended to use a DNS for service discovery and to ensure the DNS names match the OpenTelemetry service names Beyla uses. In Kubernetes environments, the OpenTelemetry service name set by the service name discovery is the best choice for service graph metrics.
• application_process: Metrics about the processes that runs the instrumented application
• network: Network-level metrics, refer to the network metrics configuration documentation to learn more
• network_inter_zone: Network inter-zone metrics, refer to the network metrics configuration documentation to learn more

Prometheus instrumentation

The list of instrumentation areas Beyla can collection data from:

• *: all instrumentation, if * is present Beyla ignores other values
• http: HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 application metrics
• grpc: gRPC application metrics
• sql: SQL database client call metrics
• redis: Redis client/server database metrics
• kafka: Kafka client/server message queue metrics

For example, setting the instrumentations option to: http,grpc enables the collection of HTTP/HTTPS/HTTP2 and gRPC application metrics, and disables other instrumentation.