OTEL Collector

Overview

The BIG-IP Next for Kubernetes OpenTelemetry (OTEL) collector receive metrics and statistics such as CPU, memory, disk, virtual server, and network interface usage from the Controller and Traffic Management Microkernel (TMM) pods through Observer pods. The OTEL Collector integrate with third-party data collection software such as Prometheus to visualize pod health using applications such as Grafana.

TMM OTEL Service

With metrics subsystem is enabled, see F5 Lifecycle Operator section, a new Service object is created to receive aggregated TMM data from the f5-observer pods on TCP service port 4317, and forward the data to the OTEL collector pod on the same service port.

Example OTEL Service:

Name:              otel-collector-svc
Namespace:         default
IP:                10.43.251.55
Port:              otlp-grpc  4317/TCP
Endpoints:         10.42.0.25:4317
Port:              otlp-prometheus  9090/TCP
Endpoints:         10.42.0.25:9090

Fetching OTEL Data

Once TMM tmstatsd container observer pods and OTEL pod become available, data collector such as Prometheus can begin fetching statistics on TCP service port 9090.

Note: The full list of OTEL statistics can be reviewed here.

Procedures

Pod Status

Use these steps to obtain the OTEL pod status:

  1. Verify the otel-collector pod is Running:

    kubectl get pods -n default | grep otel

    In this example, the OTEL pod is Running.

    otel-collector-6d558c946b-8hvz5    1/1    Running

  2. Verify the otel-collector container:

    kubectl -n default get pod -o="custom-columns=NAME:.metadata.name,INIT-CONTAINERS:.spec.initContainers[*].name,CONTAINERS:.spec.containers[*].name"

    NAME                                           INIT-CONTAINERS        CONTAINER
otel-collector-59ddd8bc8c-pkkvg                <none>                 otel-collector

  3. Prometheus data collector can now fetch metrics from OTEL Collector on service port 9090.

SSL/TLS Certificates

To create SSL/TLS certificates for communication with 3rd party such as Prometheus, click here.

Next step

The Performance Visualization guide provides a very basic set of steps for integrating the OTEL Collector with Prometheus and Grafana.

Feedback

Provide feedback to improve this document by emailing spkdocs@f5.com.

Supplemental