Docs » Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector » Automatic discovery of apps and services

Automatic discovery of apps and services đź”—

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector can automatically identify data sources and collect metrics and traces to send them to Splunk Observability Cloud. With automatic discovery and zero-code instrumentation you don’t need to manually configure the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector or your applications before deploying them.

The following diagram shows how automatic discovery finds data sources:

flowchart LR accTitle: Automatic discovery and configuration process diagram accDescr: Step one. Connect to your cloud environment. Step two. Ensure the OpenTelemetry Collector is running. Step three. Run your application. X["Connect to your \n cloud environment"] Y["Deploy the Splunk Distribution \n of the OpenTelemetry Collector \n in your environment"] Z["Run your application"] X --> Y --> Z

Automatic discovery detects and collects signal data from third-party services, such as databases and web servers. Through auto discovery the Collector automatically generates a configuration snipet that you can modify and incorporate into your existing configuration to retrieve your services’ data.

Caution

Auto discovery of third-party services is only available for the Collector in Linux and Kubernetes environments.

Via automatic discovery you can also enable zero-code instrumentation of back-end applications, which allows the Collector to retrieve data from application language runtimes without having to modify the source application code or adding any new installation or configuration steps. With this option you won’t have to install and configure your instrumentation agents separately. Zero-code instrumentation using the Collector’s automatic discovery feature is only available for the Java, Node.js, and .NET language runtimes. Alternatively you can deploy zero-code instrumentation independently from the Collector for 8 back-end languages, as described in Instrument back-end applications to send spans to Splunk APM.

Supported host services and applications for automatic discovery

Automatic discovery of third-party applications is supported in Linux and Kubernetes environments for the following services:

Service

Receiver

Apache Web Server

Apache Web Server receiver. See Apache Web Server receiver.

MySQL

MySQL receiver. See MySQL receiver

PostgreSQL

PostgreSQL receiver. See PostgreSQL receiver

OracleDB

Oracle DB receiver. See Oracle Database receiver

NGINX

NGINX receiver. See NGINX receiver

RabbitMQ

RabbitMQ receiver. See RabbitMQ receiver.

Redis

Redis receiver. See Redis receiver

MongoDB

MongoDB receiver. See MongoDB receiver

Kafka

Kafka metrics receiver. See Kafka metrics receiver

Microsoft SQL Server

Microsoft SQL Server receiver. See Microsoft SQL server receiver

Read more:

Discovered services in the UI

If you’re in a Kubernetes environment and are using the Collector version 0.109.0 or higher, log in to Splunk Observability Cloud and go to the Discovered services tab in the Data Management menu to see which of your services and third-party applications the Collector has detected and can monitor automatically.

Discovered services tab

Supported language runtimes for zero-code instrumentation

Zero-code instrumentation via the Collector’s automatic discovery is available for the following languages:

Application language

Supported for Linux

Supported for Windows

Supported for Kubernetes

Java

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Linux

No

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Kubernetes

.NET

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Linux

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Windows

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Kubernetes

Node.js

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Linux

No

Yes. See Zero-code instrumentation for back-end applications in Kubernetes

This page was last updated on Feb 06, 2025.