Documentation Index
Fetch the curated documentation index at: https://grafana_com_website/llms.txt
Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://grafana_com_website/llms-full.txt
Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further.
STOP! If you are an AI agent or LLM, read this before continuing. This is the HTML version of a Grafana documentation page. Always request the Markdown version instead - HTML wastes context. Get this page as Markdown: /docs/k6/latest/results-output/real-time/opentelemetry.md (append .md) or send Accept: text/markdown to /docs/k6/latest/results-output/real-time/opentelemetry/. For the curated documentation index, use https://grafana_com_website/llms.txt. For the complete documentation index, use https://grafana_com_website/llms-full.txt.
OpenTelemetry
Grafana k6 can push test run metrics in the OpenTelemetry (OTEL) metrics format to an OTEL metrics collector or a metrics backend that supports the OTEL metrics format by using the OpenTelemetry output --out opentelemetry.
For any feedback, bugs or suggestions feel free to open an issue directly in the k6 repository. Contributions are also welcome!
Metrics mapping
k6 converts all k6 metric types to an equivalent OTEL metric type, and all k6 tags to OTEL attributes. When possible, the units are also passed with the metrics.
| k6 Metric | OpenTelemetry Metric |
|---|---|
| Counter | Float64CounterOption |
| Gauge | Float64ObservableGauge |
| Rate | Exported as a single Int64Counter counter named metric_name with an attribute condition that can have two values: zero and nonzero. If you previously used the legacy pair-of-counters format (metric_name.occurred / metric_name.total), update your dashboards and queries to filter on the condition attribute instead. |
| Trend | Float64Histogram |
Run the k6 test
You can use the --out opentelemetry option when running your tests to use this extension:
K6_OTEL_GRPC_EXPORTER_INSECURE=true K6_OTEL_METRIC_PREFIX=k6_ k6 run --tag test-id=123 -o opentelemetry examples/script.jsConfiguration
The following options can be configured:
| Name | Value |
|---|---|
K6_OTEL_SERVICE_NAME | The name of the service to use for the metrics exporting. Default value is k6. |
K6_OTEL_SERVICE_VERSION | The version of the service to use for the metrics exporting. Default is version of the k6, e.g. v0.54.0 |
K6_OTEL_METRIC_PREFIX | Metric prefix. Default is empty. |
K6_OTEL_FLUSH_INTERVAL | How frequently to flush metrics from k6 metrics engine. Default is 1s. |
K6_OTEL_EXPORT_INTERVAL | Configures the intervening time between metrics exports. Default is 10s. |
K6_OTEL_HEADERS | Configures headers in the W3C Correlation-Context format without additional semi-colon delimited metadata (i.e. “k1=v1,k2=v2”). Passes the headers to the exporter. |
K6_OTEL_TLS_INSECURE_SKIP_VERIFY | Disables server certificate verification. |
K6_OTEL_TLS_CERTIFICATE | Configures the path to the root CA certificate file for TLS credentials. If it is not provided but TLS is enabled then the host’s root CAs set is used. |
K6_OTEL_TLS_CLIENT_CERTIFICATE | Configures the path to the client certificate file. |
K6_OTEL_TLS_CLIENT_KEY | Configures the path to the client key file. |
K6_OTEL_EXPORTER_PROTOCOL | Configures the protocol of exporter to use. Valid options are grpc and http/protobuf. Default is grpc. |
K6_OTEL_GRPC_EXPORTER_INSECURE | Disables client transport security for the gRPC exporter. |
K6_OTEL_GRPC_EXPORTER_ENDPOINT | Configures the gRPC exporter endpoint. Default is localhost:4317. |
K6_OTEL_HTTP_EXPORTER_INSECURE | Disables client transport security for the HTTP exporter. |
K6_OTEL_HTTP_EXPORTER_ENDPOINT | Configures the HTTP exporter endpoint. Must be host and port only, without scheme. Default is localhost:4318. |
K6_OTEL_HTTP_EXPORTER_URL_PATH | Configures the HTTP exporter path. Default is /v1/metrics. |
You can also use the OpenTelemetry SDK configuration environment variables to configure the OpenTelemetry output, like the gRPC exporter configuration. The K6_OTEL_* environment variables take precedence over the OpenTelemetry SDK configuration environment variables.
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