DocumentationGrafana CloudMonitor applicationsApplication ObservabilityInstrumentation setupCollectorKubernetes (OpenTelemetry Operator)

Application Observability with Kubernetes OpenTelemetry Operator

If your application is deployed in Kubernetes, you can use the OpenTelemetry Operator to instrument your application and send telemetry data to Grafana Cloud.

The OpenTelemetry Operator is a Kubernetes operator that manages the lifecycle of the OpenTelemetry Collector and Instrumentation components. It simplifies the deployment and management of OpenTelemetry components in Kubernetes.

Setup

Please follow the OpenTelemetry Operator installation guide to install the OpenTelemetry Operator in your Kubernetes cluster.

Kubernetes Monitoring

It is recommended to use Kubernetes (Alloy) as a starting point for monitoring your Kubernetes cluster.

Skip the optional step to install the OpenTelemetry Collector and use the OTLP endpoint provided by the Kubernetes Alloy setup where an exporter endpoint is required.

Java Instrumentation

In the Java guide, add the following to the Kubernetes Instrumentation manifest to use the Grafana OpenTelemetry Distribution for Java:

yaml Copy

spec:
  java:
    image: us-docker.pkg.dev/grafanalabs-global/docker-grafana-opentelemetry-java-prod/grafana-opentelemetry-java:2.3.0-beta.1 
  exporter:
    ..

If you use the Helm chart, set the image using helm instead of manually editing the Instrumentation manifest.

console Copy

helm upgrade opentelemetry-operator open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator --set manager.autoInstrumentationImage.java.repository=us-docker.pkg.dev/grafanalabs-global/docker-grafana-opentelemetry-java-prod/grafana-opentelemetry-java,manager.autoInstrumentationImage.java.tag=2.3.0-beta.1