Generic forwarding

Generic forwarding allows asynchronous replication of ingested traces. The distributor writes received spans to both the ingester and defined endpoints, if enabled. This feature works in a “best-effort” manner, meaning that no retries happen if an error occurs during replication.

Warning
Generic forwarding does not work retroactively. Once enabled, the distributor only replicates freshly ingested spans.

Configure generic forwarding

Enabling generic forwarding requires the configuration of the distributor and overrides.

First, define a list of forwarders in the distributor section. Each forwarder must specify a unique name, supported backend, and backend-specific configuration.
Second, reference these forwarders in the overrides section. This allows for fine-grained control over forwarding and makes it possible to enable this feature globally or on a per-tenant basis.

For a detailed view of all the config options for the generic forwarding feature, please refer to distributor and overrides configuration pages.