1. Understanding OpenTelemetry & OTLP Compatibility
OpenTelemetry (OTel) has emerged as the global standard for cloud-native telemetry. Instead of using vendor-specific agents that trap you in high-cost proprietary ecosystems, OTel allows you to collect traces, metrics, and logs using open protocols.
ObservabilityOS supports native OTLP HTTP/JSON standards. This means any active collector, agent, or microservice configured with an OpenTelemetry exporter can direct its output straight to our ingestion gateway. Let's see how to configure it.
2. Setting up the OpenTelemetry Collector Daemon
To begin forwarding traces and logs, modify your local or cluster-level otel-collector-config.yaml. You will add a standard otlphttp exporter pointing to the ObservabilityOS ingestion endpoint.
Note the inclusion of the x-api-key header; this is your project authentication token found in your settings dashboard panel.
receivers:
otlp:
protocols:
grpc:
http:
exporters:
otlphttp/observabilityos:
endpoint: "https://ingest.observabilityos.com/v1/telemetry"
headers:
x-api-key: "your_project_secret_api_key_here"
service:
pipelines:
logs:
receivers: [otlp]
exporters: [otlphttp/observabilityos]3. Local Testing and SDK Integration
If you are running microservices in Node.js, Express, or Next.js, you don't even need a collector daemon. You can use our zero-dependency SDK. It automatically respects OTLP formats, scrubbing PII parameters locally on the host before sending payloads in background batches.
Simply initialize the logger as a shared utility throughout your microservices to trace errors, latency spikes, and SQL slow-downs.