Use your Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector instances as agents and gateways

The Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector provides configuration files that help you configure your add-on instances three ways:

• As an agent: This is the default value and the simplest configuration. The Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector, when configured as an agent, sends data to Splunk Observability Cloud.
• As a gateway: When configured as a gateway, your Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector collects data from one or more agents before forwarding it to Splunk Observability Cloud.
• As an agent that sends data to a gateway: To use a gateway instance, you create one or more instances of Splunk add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as agents that send data to that gateway instance.

Configure Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as an agent

As an agent, the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector sends data directly to Splunk Observability Cloud. This is the default configuration.

For more information about agents, see host monitoring agent mode.

If your instance is not configured as an agent and you want to configure it as an agent, edit your inputs.conf file and update the variable Splunk_config to reflect your agent configuration file name. You can find this file in your directory at /otelcol/config/. The default file name is ta-agent-config.yaml. If you are using a custom configuration file, provide that file name.

Configure Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as a Gateway

When you configure an instance of the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as a gateway, that instance can collect data from one or more instances of the Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collection that are configured as agents. The gateway instance sends that data to Splunk Observability Cloud.

For more information about gateways, see collector gateway mode.

To configure your Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as a gateway:

1. Edit your inputs.conf file to update the variable Splunk_config with your gateway configuration file name. You can find this file in your directory at /otelcol/config/. The default file name for the gateway file is ta-gateway-config.yaml. If you are using a custom configuration file, provide that file name.
2. Set the splunk_listen_interface value to 0.0.0.0 or to the specific IP address that sends data to this gateway in local/inputs.conf.
3. You must also configure one or more Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector instances as agents that send data to your new gateway. See Configure Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as an agent that sends data to a gateway.

Configure Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as an agent that sends data to a gateway

You can set up one or more Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector instances as agents that send data to another instance that is set up as a gateway. To learn more, see Send data from an agent collector to a gateway collector.

To do this you configure an instance that works as a gateway, and then one or more instances that operate as agents. To configure your Splunk Add-on for OpenTelemetry Collector as an agent that sends information to a gateway instance:

1. Create your gateway, if you have not already done so. See Configure Splunk Add-on for Open Telemetry Collector as a Gateway for more information.
2. Edit your inputs.conf file to update the variable Splunk_config to reflect your gateway configuration file name. You can find the default configuration file in your directory at /otelcol/config/. The default file name for this configuration file is ta-agent-to-gateway-config.yaml. If you are using a custom configuration file, provide that file name.
3. In the README directory, open inputs.conf.spec and copy the attribute for the splunk_gateway_url.
4. Paste this value into ta-agent-to-gateway-config.yaml and then update the value for this setting with the gateway IP address.