Docs » Supported integrations in Splunk Observability Cloud » Configure application receivers for hosts and servers » Kafka consumer

Kafka consumer πŸ”—

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the collectd/kafka_consumer monitor type to monitor a Java-based Kafka consumer. It has a set of built-in MBeans to pull metrics from the Kafka consumer’s JMX endpoint.

This integration is only available on Kubernetes and Linux. It requires Kafka version 0.9.0.0 or higher and collects metrics from the new consumer API. Per-topic metrics are not available through the new consumer API in version 0.9.0.0 or lower, which can cause the logs to fill with warnings related to the MBean not being found. Use the mBeansToOmit config option in such cases.

Benefits πŸ”—

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

Installation πŸ”—

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

  1. Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:

  2. Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.

  3. Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration πŸ”—

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

  1. Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.

  2. Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.

Example πŸ”—

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/ collectd/kafka_consumer:
    type: collectd/kafka_consumer
    ... # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/collectd/kafka_consumer]

Configuration settings πŸ”—

The following table shows the configuration options for collectd/kafka_consumer:

Option

Required

Type

Description

host

yes

string

Host to connect to. JMX must be configured for remote access and

be accessible from the agent.

port

yes

integer

JMX connection port on the application. Not the RMI port. This

correponds to the com.sun.management.jmxremote.port Java property set on the JVM when running the application.

name

no

string

serviceName

no

string

How the service type is identified in Splunk Observability Cloud

so that you can get built-in content for it. For custom JMX integrations, set it to an arbitrary value.

serviceURL

no

string

The JMX connection string. Rendered as a Go template. Has access

to the other values in this configuration. Under normal circumstances, don’t set this string directly and use the host and port settings instead. The default value is service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://{{.Host}}:{{.Port}}/jmxrmi.

instancePrefix

no

string

Prefixes the generated plugin instance with a prefix. If a

second instancePrefix is specified in a referenced MBean block, the prefix specified in the Connection block appears at the beginning of the plugin instance, and the prefix specified in the MBean block is appended to it.

username

no

string

Username to authenticate to the server.

password

no

string

User password to authenticate to the server.

customDimensions

no

map of strings

Takes in key-values pairs of custom dimensions at the connection

level.

mBeansToCollect

no

list of strings

A list of the MBeans to be collected, as defined in

mBeanDefinitions. If not provided, all defined MBeans are collected.

mBeansToOmit

no

list of strings

A list of the MBeans to omit. This can be useful when only a few

MBeans need to omitted from the default list.

mBeanDefinitions

no

map of objects (see below)

Specifies how to map JMX MBean values to metrics. Specific

service monitors such as Cassandra, Kafka, or Activemq, are configured with a set of mappings: additional mappings are merged with those. To learn more, see the Collectd documentation .

nodeType

yes

string

Hadoop nodeType.

The nested mBeanDefinitions configuration object has the following fields:

Option

Required

Type

Description

objectName

no

string

Sets the pattern used to retrieve MBeans from the MBeanServer.

If more than one MBean is returned, use the instanceFrom option to make the identifiers unique.

instancePrefix

no

string

Prefixes the generated plugin instance with a prefix.

instanceFrom

no

list of strings

The object names used by JMX to identify MBeans include

properties, which are in the form of key-value-pairs. If the given object name is not unique and multiple MBeans are returned, the values of those properties might differ. Use this option to build the plugin instance from the appropriate property values. To generate the plugin instance from multiple property values, use multiple instances of this setting.

values

no

list of objects (see below)

The value blocks map one or more attributes of an MBean to a

value list in collectd. There must be at least one value block within each MBean block.

dimensions

no

list of strings

A list of strings for the dimensions.

The nested values config object has the following fields:

Option

Required

Type

Description

type

no

string

Sets the dataset used within collectd to handle the values of

the MBean attribute.

table

no

bool

Whether the returned attribute is a composite type. If set to

true, the keys within the composite type are appended to the type instance. The default value is false.

instancePrefix

no

string

Similar to the instancePrefix option under the MBean block,

but sets the type instance instead.

instanceFrom

no

list of strings

Similar to the instancePrefix option under the MBean block,

but sets the type instance instead.

attribute

no

string

The name of the attribute from which the value is read. You can

access the keys of composite types by using a dot to concatenate the key name to the attribute name. For example, attrib0.key42. If table is set to true, the path must point to a composite type, otherwise it must point to a numeric type.

attributes

no

list of strings

The plural form of the attribute setting. Used to derive

multiple metrics from a single MBean.

Metrics πŸ”—

The following metrics are available for this integration:

Notes πŸ”—

  • To learn more about the available in Observability Cloud see Metric types

  • In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.

  • In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.

  • To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics

Troubleshooting πŸ”—

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

  • Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers .

  • Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups in the Get Started with Splunk Community manual.

To learn about even more support options, see Splunk Customer Success .