Differences between the OpenTelemetry Collector and the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector

The collector in the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry is the same collector offered in Splunk Observability. However, the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry provides the added benefit of out-of-the box collector content and configuration.

Function	Splunk distributed OpenTelemetry Collector	Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector
Collector binary	Supported	Supported
Gateway configuration	Supported	Not included
Default agent configuration	Includes logging receiver and exporter configuration.	No out-of-the-box configuration is provided for the logging exporter or receiver.
Configuration method	Environment variables	Inputs.conf
Auto Instrumentation of language-specific agents support	Out-of-the-box configuration is available.	Out-of-the-box configuration is not available.
Distribution and deployment	Source code, binary, Operator, Helm Charts, Debian, Ansible, Puppet, Chef, Salt.	Manual installation and Splunk deployment server distribution.