Install the Collector for Windows with the installer script 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector for Windows is a package that provides integrated collection and forwarding for all data types. Install the package using one of these methods:

Installer script
Deployments

Alternatively, you can manually install the Collector. To learn how, see Install the Collector for Windows manually.

Prerequisites 🔗

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector for Windows has the following requirements depending on the installation method:

Install method	Supported versions (64-bit)
Installer script	Windows 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022
Windows installer (MSI)	Windows 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022
Ansible	Windows 2012, 2016, 2019, 2022
Chef	Windows 2019, 2022
Nomad	Windows 2012, 2016, 2019
Puppet	Windows 2012, 2016, 2019
Docker	Windows 2019, 2022

Installer script 🔗

The installer script is available for Windows 64-bit environments, and deploys and configures the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector for Windows and Fluentd through the td-agent, which is deactivated by default.

To install the package using the installer script, follow these steps:

Ensure that you have Administrator access on your host.
Run the following PowerShell command on your host, replacing the following variables for your environment:
- SPLUNK_REALM: This is the realm to send data to. The default is us0. See realms .
- SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN: This is the base64-encoded access token for authenticating data ingest requests. See Create and manage organization access tokens using Splunk Observability Cloud.

& {Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; $script = ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.ps1')); $params = @{access_token = "SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN"; realm = "SPLUNK_REALM"}; Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([scriptblock]::Create(". {$script} $(&{$args} @params)"))}

Note

If needed, activate TLS in PowerShell using the following command:

[Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol = [Net.ServicePointManager]::SecurityProtocol -bor [Net.SecurityProtocolType]::Tls12

Configure memory allocation 🔗

To configure memory allocation, use the memory parameter.

By default, the Collector is configured to use 512 MB (500 x 2^20 bytes) of memory. To increase this setting to allocate more memory, replace SPLUNK_MEMORY_TOTAL_MIB with the desired integer value.

& {Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; $script = ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.ps1')); $params = @{access_token = "SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN"; realm = "SPLUNK_REALM"; memory = "SPLUNK_MEMORY_TOTAL_MIB"}; Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([scriptblock]::Create(". {$script} $(&{$args} @params)"))}

Read more about Collector sizing in Sizing and scaling.

Configure proxy settings 🔗

To configure proxy settings to install and run the OpenTelemetry Collector, see Configure proxy settings for the Collector.

Configure fluentd for log collection 🔗

If you have a Log Observer entitlement or wish to collect logs for the target host with Fluentd, use the with_fluentd = 1 option to also install Fluentd when installing the Collector. For example:

& {Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; $script = ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.ps1')); $params = @{access_token = "SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN"; realm = "SPLUNK_REALM"; with_fluentd = 1}; Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([scriptblock]::Create(". {$script} $(&{$args} @params)"))}

When activated, the Fluentd service is configured by default to collect and forward log events with the @SPLUNK label to the Collector, which then send these events to the HEC ingest endpoint determined by the realm = "<SPLUNK_REALM>" option. For example, https://ingest.<SPLUNK_REALM>.signalfx.com/v1/log.

To configure the package to send log events to a custom HTTP Event Collector (HEC) endpoint URL with a token different than <SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN>, you can specify the following parameters for the installer script:

hec_url = "<SPLUNK_HEC_URL>"
hec_token = "<SPLUNK_HEC_TOKEN>"

For example (replace the <SPLUNK...> values in the command for your configuration):

& {Set-ExecutionPolicy Bypass -Scope Process -Force; $script = ((New-Object System.Net.WebClient).DownloadString('https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector.ps1')); $params = @{access_token = "<SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN>"; realm = "<SPLUNK_REALM>"; hec_url = "<SPLUNK_HEC_URL>"; hec_token = "<SPLUNK_HEC_TOKEN>"}; Invoke-Command -ScriptBlock ([scriptblock]::Create(". {$script} $(&{$args} @params)"))}

The installation creates the main fluentd configuration file <drive>\opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\td-agent.conf, where <drive> is the drive letter for the fluentd installation directory.

You can add custom fluentd source configuration files to the <drive>\opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\conf.d directory after installation.

Note the following:

In this directory, fluentd includes all files with the .conf extension.
By default, fluentd collects from the Windows Event Log. See <drive>\opt\td-agent\etc\td-agent\conf.d\eventlog.conf for the default configuration.

After any configuration modification, apply the changes by restarting the system or running the following PowerShell commands:

Stop-Service fluentdwinsvc
Start-Service fluentdwinsvc

Start the Collector executable manually 🔗

If you experience unexpected start failures, try to start the Collector executable manually.

To do so, run the following PowerShell command as an Admin:

& 'C:\Program Files\Splunk\OpenTelemetry Collector\otelcol.exe' --config 'C:\ProgramData\Splunk\OpenTelemetry Collector\agent_config.yaml'

Options of the installer script for Windows 🔗

The Windows installer script supports the following options:

Option	Description	Default value
`access_token`	The token used to send metric data to Splunk.
`realm`	The Splunk realm to use. The ingest, API, trace, and HEC endpoint URLs are automatically created using this value.	`us0`
`memory`	Total memory in MIB to allocate to the Collector. Automatically calculates the ballast size. See Sizing and scaling for more information.	`512`
`mode`	Configure the Collectorservice to run in host monitoring (`agent`) or data forwarding (`gateway`).	`agent`
`network_interface`	The network interface the Collectorreceivers listen on.	`0.0.0.0`
`ingest_url`	Set the base ingest URL explicitly instead of the URL inferred from the specified realm.	`https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com`
`api_url`	Set the base API URL explicitly instead of the URL inferred from the specified realm.	`https://api.REALM.signalfx.com`
`trace_url`	Set the trace endpoint URL explicitly instead of the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.	`https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com/v2/trace`
`hec_url`	Set the HEC endpoint URL explicitly instead of the endpoint inferred from the specified realm.	`https://ingest.REALM.signalfx.com/v1/log`
`hec_token`	Set the HEC token if it’s different than the specified Splunk access token.
`with_fluentd`	Whether to install and configure fluentd to forward log events to the collector. See Configure fluentd for log collection for more information.	`$false`
`with_dotnet_instrumentation`	Whether to install and configure .NET tracing to forward .NET application traces to the local collector.	`$false`
`deployment_env`	A system-wide environment tag used by .NET instrumentation. Sets the `SIGNALFX_ENV` environment variable. Ignored if `-with_dotnet_instrumentation` is set to `false`.
`bundle_dir`	The location of your Smart Agent bundle for monitor functionality.	`C:\Program Files\Splunk\OpenTelemetry Collector\agent-bundle`
`insecure`	If true then certificates aren’t checked when downloading resources.	`$false`
`collector_version`	Specify a specific version of the Collector to install.	Latest version available
`stage`	The package stage to install from [`test`, `beta`, `release`].	`release`
`collector_msi_url`	When installing the Collector, instead of downloading the package, use this local path to a Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector MSI package. If specified, the `-collector_version` and `-stage` parameters are ignored.	`https://dl.signalfx.com/splunk-otel-collector/` `msi/release/splunk-otel-collector-<version>-amd64.msi`
`fluentd_msi_url`	Specify the URL to the Fluentd MSI package to install.	`https://packages.treasuredata.com/4/windows/td-agent-4.1.0-x64.msi`
`msi_path`	Specify a local path to a Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector MSI package to install instead of downloading the package. If specified, the `-collector_version` and `-stage` parameters will be ignored.

Deployments 🔗

Splunk offers the configuration management options described in this section.

Ansible 🔗

Splunk provides an Ansible role that installs the package configured to collect data (metrics, traces, and logs) from Windows machines and send that data to Splunk Observability Cloud. See Ansible for Windows for the instructions to download and customize the role.

Chef 🔗

Splunk provides a cookbook to install the Collector using Chef. See Chef for the installation instructions.

Nomad 🔗

Use Nomad to deploy the Collector. To learn how to install Nomad, see Nomad.

Puppet 🔗

Splunk provides a Puppet module to install and configure the package. A module is a collection of resources, classes, files, definition, and templates. To learn how to download and customize the module, see Puppet for Windows.

Next steps 🔗

After you have installed the package, you can do the following:

Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
View logs and errors in the Windows Event Viewer. Search for “view logs and errors” on Microsoft documentation site for more information.
Set up Splunk APM.

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