Collector self-telemetry
Collector self-telemetry shows how well the agent’s embedded OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector is performing. The health metrics tell you whether the collector is up. Self-telemetry tells you how well it is keeping up while it runs. It is opt-in, because it adds metric volume, and it is emitted in-band through the collector itself.
What it reports
Section titled “What it reports”When enabled, the collector emits its standard otelcol_* metrics, including:
- Exporter health: queue size and capacity, send failures, and successfully sent items, so you can see whether the collector is falling behind on shipping data.
- Receiver activity: accepted and refused items, so you can see whether data is being dropped at intake.
- Processor and process metrics: internal pipeline and process counters.
These are the standard metrics any OpenTelemetry Collector produces.
Not a liveness signal
Section titled “Not a liveness signal”These metrics flow through the collector, so they stop when the collector does. That means they are not a liveness signal. That is the job of the out-of-band health metrics. If the health metrics show kmagent.collector.up=1 but self-telemetry goes silent, that gap points to a stuck pipeline.
Enabling it
Section titled “Enabling it”Collector self-telemetry is turned on through the agent’s settings. After you turn it on, the otelcol_* metrics arrive in KloudMate alongside your other telemetry. You can then build dashboards and alerts on exporter queue depth and send failures.