Get data into Splunk Observability Cloud 🔗
Use Splunk Observability Cloud to achieve full-stack observability of all your data sources, including your infrastructure, applications, and user interfaces. Splunk Observability Cloud includes the following products:
Here’s a high-level overview of your options for getting data from each layer of your stack into the Splunk Observability Cloud product best suited to provide insights about your system.

For standard environments and workflows, perform all the steps described below to get the most out of Splunk Observability Cloud. However, depending on your observability goals and environment, you can choose to perform only a subset of the steps. For example, if you don’t use every Splunk Observability Cloud product, or if you don’t want to collect data from every eligible data source.
Per product integration recommendations 🔗
If you’re not yet implementing full-stack observability as described in the diagram above, and are using only one or a few products, see the table to learn which steps are recommended, optional, or not applicable (n/a) based on your use case.
Step |
Infrastructure Monitoring only |
APM only |
RUM only |
Sends logs? |
---|---|---|---|---|
Recommended |
n/a |
n/a |
Yes |
|
2. Install the OpenTelemetry Collector for servers and clusters |
Recommended |
Recommended |
n/a |
Yes |
Optional |
Optional |
n/a |
Yes |
|
Optional |
Recommended |
n/a |
Yes |
|
Optional |
Recommended |
n/a |
No |
|
6. Configure apps and serverless functions to send custom data |
n/a |
n/a |
Recommended |
No |
Recommended |
Recommended |
n/a |
No |
|
Optional |
Optional |
n/a |
Yes |
1. Integrate with cloud services to send metrics and logs 🔗
If you’re using cloud services for your infrastructure, the first step is to integrate these services with Splunk Observability Cloud. Cloud integrations can send metrics and metadata (such as tags, labels and other properties) to Infrastructure Monitoring.
After you’ve integrated with your cloud services, you can access your data in the following locations:
View metrics in Infrastructure Monitoring navigators
View metrics in built-in dashboards for AWS, GCP, and Azure services
Search for metrics using the Metric Finder. For the list of metrics provided by a cloud service, see:
Steps 🔗
To integrate with Amazon Web Services, use the method that better suits your environment:
Polling (default): Use either Splunk’s UI wizard or the Splunk Observability Cloud API
Streaming (Splunk-managed): Use either the UI wizard or the Splunk Observability Cloud API
Streaming (AWS-managed): Connect and manage Metric Streams from the AWS console
Splunk Terraform: Use this if you already manage your infrastructure as code by deploying through Terraform
To integrate with Google Cloud Platform services, use the method that best suits your environment:
To integrate with Microsoft Azure services, use the method that best suits your environment:
For example, you might want to use the guided setup if you are setting up just a few integrations. However, if you are setting up many integrations, such as for different accounts and regions, use the API or Terraform. Note that if you need all of the latest integration features, you might want to use the API because support might not yet be available using Terraform.
2. Install the OpenTelemetry Collector to send server and cluster data 🔗
Install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector on any hosts or clusters you’re using as a part of your infrastructure, such as servers running in your data center or on a virtual machine running in the cloud to:
Send metrics to Infrastructure Monitoring
Send logs to Log Observer
Set up your environment to receive logs and traces from applications instrumented in step 4. Instrument back-end services and applications to send traces, logs, and metrics
After you’ve installed the Collector and configured your servers and clusters, you can access your data in the following locations:
View metrics in Infrastructure Monitoring navigators
View metrics in built-in dashboards for hosts and Kubernetes
Search for metrics using Metric Finder
Query logs in Log Observer, if you chose to ingest logs
Steps 🔗
To configure Windows servers, install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector using the method that best suits your environment:
To configure Linux servers, install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector using the method that best suits your environment:
To configure Kubernetes clusters, install the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector using the method that best suits your environment:
One of the benefits of using the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to send your data to Splunk Observability Cloud is that Related Content, a feature that activates users to seamlessly move between key views in Splunk Observability Cloud, is easier to implement. For more information, see Related Content in Splunk Observability Cloud.
3. Configure third-party server applications to send metrics, logs, and traces 🔗
After you’ve completed step 2. Install the OpenTelemetry Collector to send server and cluster data and installed the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector on your servers (hosts) or in your clusters, configure the Collector’s native receivers or any of these third-party applications, such as Apache, Cassandra, Hadoop, Kafka, and NGINX, to monitor your systems.
After you’ve configured the Collector’s pipelines for your desired server applications, access your data in the following locations:
View metrics using any built-in dashboards available for your server applications. For example, here is the built-in Kafka dashboard:
For more information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
Search for metrics using Metric Finder. For the list of metrics provided by an application receiver, see the documentation for the application receiver.
Query logs in Log Observer, if you chose to ingest logs
For SignalFx Forwarder only, you can:
View traces on the APM landing page to assess the health of your applications
View traces in the APM Explorer view to assess dependencies among your applications
4. Instrument back-end services and applications to send traces, logs, and metrics 🔗
You can choose to instrument applications that you’ve developed in-house to send data to Splunk Observability Cloud:
Traces to APM
Logs (events) to Log Observer
Metrics to Infrastructure Monitoring (Java only)
After you’ve instrumented your application, you can access your data in the following locations:
View traces on the APM landing page to assess the health of your applications
View traces in the APM Explorer view to assess dependencies among your applications
For a Java application, you can search for metrics using Metric Finder
Query logs in Log Observer, if you chose to ingest logs
Steps 🔗
See the instrumentation documentation for your application language:
Note
If you use the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to send your data to Splunk Observability Cloud, you can benefit from Related Content, a feature that activates users to seamlessly move between key views in Splunk Observability Cloud. For more information, see Related Content in Splunk Observability Cloud.
5. Instrument serverless functions to send traces and metrics 🔗
You can choose to instrument your serverless functions.
Note: This step is about bringing in built-in metrics and traces. Once you have a chance to familiarize yourself with your data coming in, you can use this same instrumentation to bring in custom data. For more information, see step 7. Configure applications and serverless functions to send custom data.
This integration can send:
Traces to APM
Metrics to Infrastructure Monitoring
After you’ve instrumented your serverless functions, you can access your data in the following locations:
View traces on the APM landing page to assess the health of your applications
View traces in the APM Explorer view to assess dependencies among your applications
View metrics in the Infrastructure Monitoring Lambda Functions navigator
For more information, see Monitor AWS services and identify problems.
View metrics in built-in dashboards for AWS Lambda
Search for metrics using Metric Finder
Steps 🔗
To instrument your AWS Lambda serverless functions, see Instrument serverless functions for Splunk Observability Cloud.
6. Instrument user interfaces to send user sessions 🔗
You can instrument browser and mobile user interfaces to monitor front-end application user experiences, sending your user sessions to RUM to review key metrics and vitals, as well as investigate errors in your spans:

Steps 🔗
To instrument web browsers to send user session data, see Instrument browser-based web applications for Splunk RUM.
To instrument an iOS application to send user session data, see Instrument iOS applications for Splunk RUM.
To instrument an Android application to send user session data, see Instrument Android applications for Splunk RUM.
7. Configure applications and serverless functions to send custom data 🔗
Now that you have built-in data from your full stack flowing into Splunk Observability Cloud, assess whether there are custom data points you need to bring in.
For many teams, some of the most meaningful data is custom data because you can define these data points to focus on what is most important to you in your specific environment.
For example, if you run an e-commerce site, you might configure your application to send a custom metric about the number of orders placed. You can then create a detector to receive an alert when the number of orders drops significantly. You might also configure your application to send a custom metric about how long payment processing takes. You can then create a detector to issue alerts when the processing time exceeds a threshold.
You can configure applications to send custom metrics and instrument serverless functions to send custom traces. Access your custom data in the following locations:
View traces on the APM landing page to assess the health of your applications
View traces in the APM Explorer view to assess dependencies among your applications
Search for metrics using Metric Finder
Configuration steps for back-end applications 🔗
Use the library for your application language:
Go client library for SignalFx on GitHub
For Java, use one of these available integrations:
Node.js client library for SignalFx on GitHub
Python client library for SignalFx on GitHub
Ruby client library for SignalFx on GitHub
Instrument serverless functions 🔗
To instrument your AWS Lambda serverless functions, see Instrument serverless functions for Splunk Observability Cloud.
8. Use the Splunk Observability Cloud API to send custom data 🔗
Now that you have built-in data from your full stack flowing into Splunk Observability Cloud, assess whether there are custom data points you need to bring in. You can use the Splunk Observability Cloud API to bring in custom data.
You might want to use the API if you want to integrate with:
A third-party tool that provides an API/webhook integration only.
An application written in a language we don’t provide a library for.
This API integration can send all types of data to Splunk Observability Cloud. While you can use the API to send logs to Log Observer, we recommend using other integration types to do so. For details about which integrations can send logs to Log Observer, see Per product integration recommendations.
After you’ve configured your integration to send custom data, you can access your data in the following locations:
View traces on the APM landing page to assess the health of your applications.
View traces in the APM Explorer view to assess dependencies among your applications.
Search for metrics at the Metric Finder, or use the metrics pipeline management tool.
Query logs using Log Observer, if you chose to ingest logs.
Steps 🔗
For information about using the Splunk Observability Cloud API to send custom data, see Send metrics, traces, and events using Splunk Observability Cloud REST APIs.
Next: Leverage the full benefits of Splunk Observability Cloud 🔗
Now that you have your desired full stack of data coming into Splunk Observability Cloud, consider exploring the following features that can help you monitor, visualize, and coordinate team work around your data:
Create detectors to receive alerts about conditions in your data that are important you.
Create charts to visualize your data.
Use Related Content to jump between components of Splunk Observability Cloud by clicking related data.
Create and customize dashboards to organize and share your charts.
Create and manage teams in Splunk Observability Cloud to coordinate team work around your data.
Check system critical metrics, access real-time alerts, and view mobile-friendly dashboards on the go using the Splunk Observability Cloud mobile app.
Learn more about the Splunk Observability Cloud data model.
- Learn more about each product in the Splunk Observability Cloud suite:
Support 🔗
If you need assistance setting up or using Splunk Observability Cloud, check the Troubleshooting docs for each feature, or contact Splunk Observability Cloud support.