Docs » Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector » Configure the Collector

Configure the Collector 🔗

You can use a variety of default configuration files to set up the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector, as well additional components that you can configure separately.

See also other configuration options:

Note

Splunk Observability Cloud also offers several options for no-hassle, zero-config Auto Instrumentation. Learn more at Splunk OpenTelemetry Zero Configuration Auto Instrumentation.

Configuration files¶

See the default configuration to learn about the basic structure of the Collector’s configuration file. It also contains an example valid for most environments.

You can also use these configurations to change the default settings in each Collector package:

Multiple configuration files¶

To define multiple config files simultaneously use:

./otelcol --config=file:/path/to/first/file --config=file:/path/to/second/file

Configure log collection¶

Use the Fluentd receiver to collect logs. Common sources such as filelog, journald, and Windows Event Viewer are included in the installation. See Fluent Forward receiver for more information.

Note

If you have a Log Observer entitlement or wish to collect logs for the target host, make sure Fluentd is installed and enabled in your Collector instance.

Fluentd artifacts¶

The following table describes the artifacts in the Fluentd directory:

Configuration

Description

fluent.conf or td-agent.conf

These are the main Fluentd configuration files used to forward events to the Collector. The file locations are /etc/otel/collector/fluentd/fluent.conf on Linux and C:\opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\td-agent.conf on Windows. By default, these files configure Fluentd to include custom Fluentd sources and forward all log events with the @SPLUNK label to the Collector.

conf.d

This directory contains the custom Fluentd configuration files. The location is /etc/otel/collector/fluentd/conf.d on Linux and \opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\conf.d on Windows. All files in this directory ending with the .conf extension are automatically included by Fluentd, including \opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\conf.d\eventlog.conf on Windows.

splunk-otel-collector.conf

This is the drop-in file for the Fluentd service on Linux. Use this file to override the default Fluentd configuration path in favor of the custom Fluentd configuration file for Linux (fluent.conf).

The following is a sample configuration to collect custom logs:

<source>
  @type tail
  @label @SPLUNK
  <parse>
    @type none
  </parse>
  path /path/to/my/custom.log
  pos_file /var/log/td-agent/my-custom-logs.pos
  tag my-custom-logs
</source>

See Fluent Forward receiver for more information.

Additional components and configuration sources¶

You can also use these additional configuration sources:

  • Environment variable (Alpha)

  • etcd (Alpha)

  • Include config source (Beta)

  • Vault (Alpha)

  • Zookeeper (Alpha)