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

Get started with the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector 🔗

The OpenTelemetry Collector uses pipelines to receive, process, and export trace data with components known as receivers, processors, and exporters. You can also add extensions that provide the OpenTelemetry Collector with additional functionality, such as diagnostics and health checks.

The OpenTelemetry Collector has a core version and a contributions version. The core version provides receivers, processors, and exporters for general use. The contributions version provides receivers, processors, and exporters for specific vendors and use cases.

Caution

Splunk officially supports the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector. Splunk only provides best-effort support for the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector. See Send telemetry using the OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib project for more information.

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector is a distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector. The distribution is a project that bundles components from OpenTelemetry Core, OpenTelemetry Contrib, and other sources to provide data collection for multiple source platforms.

flowchart LR subgraph "\nSplunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector" receivers processors exporters extensions end Infrastructure -- "metrics, logs" --> receivers B[Back-end services] -- "traces, metrics, logs" --> receivers C[Front-end experiences] -- "traces" --> S[Splunk Observability Cloud] receivers --> processors processors --> exporters exporters --> S[Splunk Observability Cloud] exporters --> P[Splunk Cloud Platform]

The customizations in the Splunk distribution include these features:

  • Better defaults for Splunk products

  • Discovery mode for metric sources

  • Zero configuration auto instrumentation

  • Fluentd for log capture, deactivated by default

  • Tools to support migration from SignalFx products

Note

Check Migrate from SignalFx Smart Agent to the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to learn how to migrate your data from the SignalFx Smart Agent (deprecated) to the Collector.

To get started with the Collector, see Overview of the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector:

  1. Check the requirements.

  2. Install and deploy the Collector. Get instructions for installing the Collector on a variety of platforms. Or use our guided install.

  3. Learn about the discovery mode. See Discover and configure metrics sources automatically.

  4. Learn about the available configuration options.

  5. Troubleshoot the Collector. Try these troubleshooting techniques and learn how to open a support request.

For more information: