Docs » Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector » Get started with the Collector for Windows » Install the Collector for Windows using deployment tools » Deploy the Collector for Windows with Chef

Deploy the Collector for Windows with Chef đź”—

Chef is a configuration management technology used to manage infrastructure on physical or virtual machines. Chef uses cookbooks to define a scenario.

Cookbooks are fundamental working units of Chef, which consists of all the details related to working units, having the capability to modify configuration and the state of any system configured as a node on Chef infrastructure. Cookbooks can run multiple tasks.

Prerequisites đź”—

You need the following resources to use Chef:

Windows đź”—

The following Windows versions. All versions require using PowerShell 3.0 or newer.

  • Windows Server 2019 64-bit

  • Windows Server 2022 64-bit

Caution

On Windows, the Collector is installed as a Windows service and its environment variables are set at the service scope, so they’re only available to the Collector service and not to the entire machine.

Install and use the Collector with Chef đź”—

Download the Chef cookbook from the Chef Supermarket , which is the site for community cookbooks.

To install the Collector, include the splunk_otel_collector::default recipe in the run_list, and set the attributes on the node’s run_state. The following is an example configuration that shows how to configure the required splunk_access_token attribute and some optional attributes:

{
    "splunk-otel-collector": {
        "splunk_access_token": "<SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN>",
        "splunk_realm": "<SPLUNK_REALM>",
    }
}

Configure automatic discovery for SignalFx .NET đź”—

You can automatically instrument your .NET applications along with the Collector installation using automatic discovery. Automatic discovery removes the need to install and configure the SignalFx .NET agent separately. See Discover telemetry sources automatically for more information.

The cookbook accepts the attributes described in the following table:

Name

Description

Default value

with_signalfx_dotnet_instrumentation

Whether to install or manage automatic discovery for .NET. When set to true, the signalfx-dotnet-tracing MSI package will be downloaded and installed, and the Windows registry will be updated based on other configuration options. To learn more, see Automatic discovery for back-end applications in Windows

false

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_version

Version of the signalfx-dotnet-tracing MSI package to download and install.

1.1.0

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_msi_url

Specify the URL to download the MSI from a custom host, for example https://my.host/signalfx-dotnet-tracing-1.0.0-x64.msi. If specified, the signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_version option is ignored.

https://github.com/signalfx/signalfx-dotnet-tracing/releases/download/v{{ signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_version }}/signalfx-dotnet-tracing-{{ signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_version }}-x64.msi

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_iisreset

By default, the iisreset.exe command will be executed after installation/configuration in order for any changes to take effect for IIS applications. Set this option to false to skip this step if IIS is managed separately or is not applicable.

false

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_system_wide

Whether to configure automatic discovery for all .NET applications on the node. When set to true, all attributes and environment variables are added to the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Environment registry key.

false

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_environment

Sets the deployment environment variable that is reported to Splunk APM, for example production. The value is assigned to the SIGNALFX_ENV environment variable in the Windows registry.

''

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_service_name

Sets the service name for the instrumented application, for example, my-service. The value is assigned to the SIGNALFX_SERVICE_NAME environment variable in the Windows registry.

''

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_enable_profiler

Activates or deactivates AlwaysOn Profiling. The value will be assigned to the SIGNALFX_PROFILER_ENABLED environment variable in the Windows registry.

false

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_enable_profiler_memory

Activates or deactivates AlwaysOn Memory Profiling. The value will be assigned to the SIGNALFX_PROFILER_MEMORY_ENABLED environment variable in the Windows registry.

false

signalfx_dotnet_auto_instrumentation_additional_options

Hash of additional options to be added to the Windows registry in addition to the options above. To learn more, see Configure the SignalFx Instrumentation for .NET.

{}

Additional environment variables đź”—

Use collector_additional_env_vars to include any additional environment variables from the Collector configuration file for the Collector’s service. {} by default.

For example, if the Collector’s configuration file includes references to ${MY_CUSTOM_VAR1} and ${MY_CUSTOM_VAR2}, specify the following to allow the Collector service to expand these variables:

collector_additional_env_vars: {'MY_CUSTOM_VAR1' => 'value1', 'MY_CUSTOM_VAR2' => 'value2'}

On Linux, the variables/values will be added to the /etc/otel/collector/splunk-otel-collector.conf systemd environment file.

On Windows, the variables/values will be added to the Environment value under the HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Services\splunk-otel-collector registry key.

Next steps đź”—

After you have installed the package, see:

This page was last updated on Jul 08, 2024.