Docs » Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector » Collector components » Collector components: Exporters » OTLP exporter

OTLP exporter 🔗

The OTLP exporter sends metrics, traces, and logs through gRPC using the OTLP format. The supported pipeline types are traces, metrics, and logs. See Process your data with pipelines for more information. By default, this exporter requires TLS and provides queued retry capabilities.

To send OTLP data through HTTP, use the OTLP/HTTP exporter. Learn how at OTLP/HTTP exporter.

If you need to bypass the Collector and send data in the OTLP format directly to Splunk Observability Cloud:

Read more about the OTLP format at the OTel repo OpenTelemetry Protocol Specification .

Note

For information on the OTLP receiver, see OTLP receiver.

Get started 🔗

Note

This component is included in the default configuration of the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector when deploying in data forwarding (gateway) mode. See Collector deployment modes for more information.

For details about the default configuration, see Configure the Collector for Kubernetes with Helm, Collector for Linux default configuration, or Collector for Windows default configuration. You can customize your configuration any time as explained in this document.

Follow these steps to configure and activate the component:

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

  1. Configure the exporter as described in the next section.

  2. Restart the Collector.

Sample configuration 🔗

To activate the component, add otlp to the exporters section of your configuration file:

exporters:
  otlp:

The OTLP exporter is included in the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector default configuration in all data pipelines: metrics, traces, and logs.

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      processors: [otlp]
    logs:
      processors: [otlp]
    traces:
      processors: [otlp]

The following settings are required:

  • endpoint. Address to which the exporter is going to send OTLP data, using the gRPC protocol.

    • No default value.

    • gRPC supports DNS as the default name-system. To learn more about the valid name syntax, see gRCP Name Resolution in GitHub.

    • If you’re using a scheme of https, then client transport security is enabled and overrides the insecure setting.

  • tls. See TLS Configuration Settings in this document for the full set of available options.

    • By default, tls: insecure is set to true.

    • Mutual TLS (mTLS) is also supported. See more at TLS/mTLS configuration in GitHub.

Configuration examples 🔗

This is a sample configuration for the exporter:

exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: otelcol2:4317
    tls:
      cert_file: file.cert
      key_file: file.key
  otlp/2:
    endpoint: otelcol2:4317
    tls:
      insecure: true

Configure gzip compression 🔗

By default, gzip compression is enabled. To turn it off, use the following configuration:

exporters:
  otlp:
    ...
    compression: none

Settings 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for the OTLP exporter:

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

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 .