Export Your Enterprise OpenTelemetry (OTEL) Metrics

Introduction

This article describes how to export OpenTelemetry (OTEL) metrics from ZEDEDA Cloud to your own monitoring and alerting tools. The OpenTelemetry (OTEL) metrics export provides a standardized, streaming mechanism that sends ZEDEDA platform observability data directly to your preferred observability platform. Streaming edge infrastructure metrics into a centralized platform lets you track the health and performance of your edge nodes and applications without relying on inefficient API polling. To export OpenTelemetry metrics, you configure an OpenTelemetry integration, configure a data stream, and configure the project.

OpenTelemetry (OTEL) is an enterprise-scoped integration. It streams metrics for your entire enterprise, across all projects and edge nodes, to an external platform, so you configure it once under the enterprise's third-party integrations. 

Prerequisites

• You must have either the SysManager or SysAdmin role in your ZEDEDA Cloud enterprise.
• You have an OpenTelemetry collector endpoint that accepts OTLP/gRPC data, including its hostname and port.
• You have a bearer token for authenticating to your OpenTelemetry collector.

Configure the Integration

1. Go to Enterprise > Third Party Integrations.
2. Click the Add Integration card.
3. Add the third-party integration name.
4. Select the Data integration category from the dropdown list.
5. Select the OpenTelemetry(gRPC) integration type from the dropdown list.
6. Enter the bearer token in the format of Bearer <your-token>.
7. Enter the host in the format of your-otel-collector-hostname (for example, otel-collector.example.com).
8. Enter the port in the format of 4317 (the default OTLP/gRPC port, but replace this with your custom port number if applicable).
9. (Optional) Toggle Skip Verify to enable TLS certificate verification to be skipped. Use this only in non-production or testing environments where the server uses a self-signed certificate.
10. (Optional) Toggle Enable TLS to enable encrypted communication between ZEDEDA and your OpenTelemetry collector endpoint.
11. Click Add.

Configure the Data Stream

1. Go to Enterprise > Data Streams.
2. Click the Add Data Stream card.
3. Select the Device Metrics data streaming type from the dropdown list.
4. Add the data stream name.
5. Select the Third Party Integration that you previously created.
6. (Optional) Toggle Enable Streaming to activate metric streaming to the configured integration immediately.
7. Click Add.

Configure the Project

1. Create or edit a Project.
2. Toggle Suppress Streaming Telemetry to disable telemetry streaming for edge nodes in this project, overriding the data stream configuration.

Verify the Configuration

1. Confirm the OpenTelemetry integration and the data stream appear in their respective lists, with streaming enabled.
2. Confirm that OTEL metrics arrive at your OpenTelemetry collector and appear in your monitoring tool.
3. If no metrics arrive, verify the host, port, bearer token, and TLS settings, and confirm that streaming is not suppressed for the project.

Next Steps

• Enterprise Overview for how enterprises group and manage your edge nodes and integrations.
• Integrate Your Enterprise with Rancher Orchestration.