HTTP 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the http monitor type to generate metrics based on whether the HTTP response from the configured URL matches expectations. For example, correct body, status code, and so on.

Note

To monitor HTTP endpoints with the OpenTelemetry Collector using native OpenTelemetry components refer to the HTTP check receiver.

If applicable, TLS information is automatically fetched from the base URL or redirection, depending on whether the useHTTPS parameter is configured.

Benefits 🔗

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

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Setup 🔗

To create a webcheck from a URL, split the URL into different configuration options. All of these options determine the URL dimension value from its “normalized” URL, which is in the format of {scheme}://{host}:{port}{path}:

scheme is https if useHTTPS:true, or http if useHTTPS:false.
host is the host name of the site to check. This option is required.
port is the port to connect to. If not defined, port is 443 if useHTTPS:true or 80 if useHTTPS:false. The default value for http is 80. If the default value is used, port is removed from the configuration because it is implicit and makes the behavior similar to what curl does.
path contains the full query including the resource path and finally the GET method parameters with ? separator.

Configure the following options to change the behavior of the request done on this URL:

Configure the method option to define request types such as GET or POST. See https://golang.org/src/net/http/method.go for the full list of available methods.
Configure the username and password options for basic authentication.
Configure the httpHeaders option to define request headers. Use this option to override the host header.
Configure the requestBody option to provide a body to the request. The form of this body depends on the Content-Type header. For example, {"foo":"bar"} with Content-Type: application/json.
Configure the noRedirects:false option to stop the URL from following redirects. The default value is true.

See configuration examples for different request behaviors.

The following configuration options change the resulting values:

The desiredCode option determines the http.code_matched value. Configure this option if you expect a different “normal” value. The default value is 200. For example, configure desiredCode:301 and noRedirects:false to check a redirect (and not the end redirected URL) keeping the value to 1 (success).
The regex option does the same with the http.regex_matched metric, where the value is 1 only if the provided regex matches the response body.
The addRedirectURL option does not have impact on metrics, but adds a new dimension redirect_url with a “dynamic” value. If the url dimension changes with the monitor configuration, the redirect_url value is impacted by any server change and is always the last URL redirected. This option is deactivated by default because this could cause issues with heartbeat detectors, for example.

The following HTTP headers let the client and the server pass additional information with an HTTP request or response:

Cache-Control: no-cache to send the request to the origin server for validation before releasing a cached copy.
Host to change the request, that is, to bypass CDN or load balancer requesting directly the back end.
Content-Type to indicate the media type of the resource. For example, json, xml, or octet-stream.

Installation 🔗

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
Configure the integration, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration 🔗

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

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.

See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example 🔗

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

receivers:
  smartagent/http:
    type: http
    ... # Additional config

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

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/http]

Monitor multiple hosts 🔗

To monitor multiple hosts, add an http monitor entry for each host in the receivers section of the configuration. For example:

receivers:
  smartagent/host1:
    type: http
    ... # Additional config for host 1
  smartagent/host2:
    type: http
    ... # Additional config for host 2

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

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/host1, smartagent/host2]

Configuration options 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for this monitor:

Option	Required	Type	Description
`host`	no	`string`	The host or IP address to monitor. Note: Host is required for functionality, but not for configuration validation.
`port`	no	`integer`	The port of the HTTP server to monitor. The default value is `0`.
`path`	no	`string`	The HTTP path to use in the test request.
`httpTimeout`	no	`int64`	The HTTP timeout duration for both read and writes. This should be a duration string that is accepted by the `ParseDuration` type. The default value is `10s`.
`username`	no	`string`	The basic auth username to use on each request, if any.
`password`	no	`string`	The basic auth password to use on each request, if any.
`useHTTPS`	no	`bool`	If `true`, the Collector connects to the server using HTTPS instead of plain HTTP. The default value is `false`.
`httpHeaders`	no	`map of strings`	A map of HTTP header names to values. Comma-separated multiple values for the same message-header are supported.
`skipVerify`	no	`bool`	If `useHTTPS` is true and this option is also `true`, the exporter’s TLS cert is not verified. The default value is `false`.
`sniServerName`	no	`string`	If `useHTTPS` is `true` and `skipVerify` is `true`, the sniServerName is used to verify the host name on the returned certificates. It is also included in the client’s handshake to support virtual hosting unless it is an IP address.
`caCertPath`	no	`string`	The path to the CA certificate that has signed the TLS cert. This option is unnecessary if `skipVerify` is set to `false`.
`clientCertPath`	no	`string`	The path to the client TLS cert to use for TLS required connections.
`clientKeyPath`	no	`string`	The path to the client TLS key to use for TLS required connections.
`requestBody`	no	`string`	Optional HTTP request body as string, for example, `{"foo":"bar"}`.
`noRedirects`	no	`bool`	Do not follow redirect. The default value is `false`.
`method`	no	`string`	HTTP request method to use. The default value is `GET`.
`urls`	no	`list of strings`	Provides a list of HTTP URLs to monitor. This option is deprecated. Use `host`/`port`/`useHTTPS`/`path` instead.
`regex`	no	`string`	Optional regex to match on URL(s) response(s).
`desiredCode`	no	`integer`	Desired code to match for URL(s) response(s). The default value is `200`.
`addRedirectURL`	no	`bool`	Adds the `redirect_url` dimension, which could differ from `url` when redirection is followed. The default value is `false`.

Metrics 🔗

These are the metrics available for this integration:

Notes 🔗

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk 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 🔗

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

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal .
Contact Splunk Support .

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.

This page was last updated on Feb 11, 2025.

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