Installing the OpenTelemetry Collector

opentelemetry collector is a powerful, vendor agnostic, and flexible component in the opentelemetry ecosystem that simplifies the collection, processing, and export of telemetry data from various sources this guide will walk you through the process of setting up and using the opentelemetry collector when to use opentelemetry collector? using the opentelemetry collector is not mandatory but is recommended as a best practice since it provides a local collector agent as the default location for instrumentation libraries to export their telemetry data, the applications can quickly offload the data to the collector this makes it particularly beneficial in complex and dynamic environments where the telemetry data is generated and consumed by a variety of systems and tools it streamlines the collection and processing of the telemetry data and can also take care of additional handling such as retries, batching, encryption, granular data filtering, and more installing the opentelemetry collector prerequisites a system where you can install the opentelemetry collector this can be a physical or virtual machine or a container orchestration platform like kubernetes linux server linux releases are available for various architectures you can download the file containing the binary and install it on your machine manually every collector release includes apk, deb, and rpm packaging for linux amd64/arm64/i386 systems you can find the default configuration in /etc/otelcol contrib/config yaml /etc/otelcol contrib/config yaml after installation systemd systemd is required for automatic service configuration deb installation you can choose from the following packages based on your system architecture linux 386 deb linux package for intel/amd 32 bit architecture in debian package format linux amd64 deb linux package for intel/amd 64 bit architecture in debian package format linux arm64 deb linux package for arm 64 bit architecture in debian package format linux armv7 deb linux package for arm 32 bit architecture in debian package format linux ppc64le deb linux package for powerpc 64 bit little endian architecture in debian package format linux s390x deb linux package for ibm system z architecture in debian package format to get started on debian systems run the following commands amd64 sudo apt get update sudo apt get y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 116 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux amd64 deb sudo dpkg i otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux amd64 deb arm64 sudo apt get update sudo apt get y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 116 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux arm64 deb sudo dpkg i otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux arm64 deb i386 sudo apt get update sudo apt get y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 116 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux 386 deb sudo dpkg i otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux 386 deb rpm installation you can choose from the following packages based on your system architecture linux 386 rpm linux package for intel/amd 32 bit architecture in rpm package format linux amd64 rpm linux package for intel/amd 64 bit architecture in rpm package format linux arm64 rpm linux package for arm 64 bit architecture in rpm package format linux armv7 rpm linux package for arm 32 bit architecture in rpm package format linux ppc64le rpm linux package for powerpc 64 bit little endian architecture in rpm package format linux s390x rpm linux package for ibm system z architecture in rpm package format to get started on red hat systems run the following commands amd64 sudo yum update sudo yum y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 114 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux amd64 rpm sudo rpm ivh otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux amd64 rpm arm64 sudo yum update sudo yum y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 116 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux arm64 rpm sudo rpm ivh otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux arm64 rpm i386 sudo yum update sudo yum y install wget systemctl wget https //github com/open telemetry/opentelemetry collector releases/releases/download/v0 116 0/otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux 386 rpm sudo rpm ivh otelcol contrib 0 116 0 linux 386 rpm windows server download the opentelemetry collector for windows choose the correct version select the appropriate version of the opentelemetry collector for windows each collector release includes an otelcol contrib exe otelcol contrib exe executable that you can run after unpacking run the installer locate the downloaded installer executable for otelcol contrib otelcol contrib (choose either x64 or x86 ) right click on the installer file and select "run as administrator " follow the instructions in the installation wizard to complete the installation related resources using opentelemetry collector