The OpenTelemetry Collector emits its own pipeline health metrics under the otelcol_* prefix. Configure the built-in OTLP telemetry reader to push those metrics to SigNoz.
Prerequisites
- OpenTelemetry Collector v0.92 or later
- An instance of SigNoz (Cloud or Self-Hosted)
How it works
The Collector has a built-in telemetry pipeline that reports internal counters and gauges, including received spans, processor drops, exporter queue depth, and process memory. Add an OTLP periodic reader under service.telemetry.metrics to send those metrics to SigNoz at a configured interval.
level: normal (the default) covers receiver throughput, exporter queues, batch processor stats, and process resources. level: detailed adds per-method HTTP/RPC dimensions on exporter calls.
Steps
Step 1: Add the telemetry reader
Add a service.telemetry block to your Collector config with a periodic OTLP exporter pointing at SigNoz:
service:
telemetry:
resource:
service.name: "<service-name>"
metrics:
level: normal
readers:
- periodic:
interval: 60000
exporter:
otlp:
protocol: "http/protobuf"
endpoint: "https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443"
headers:
signoz-ingestion-key: "<your-ingestion-key>"
Verify these values:
<region>: Your SigNoz Cloud region<your-ingestion-key>: Your SigNoz ingestion key<service-name>: A unique name for this Collector instance. If you run multiple instances, use different names to distinguish them in the dashboard.
This config block is independent of your pipeline. You do not need to add a receiver, processor, or pipeline.
Step 2: Apply and restart
Validate the config and restart the Collector service:
sudo /usr/bin/otelcol-contrib validate --config /etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml
sudo systemctl restart otelcol-contrib
Tail the logs to confirm the telemetry reader started with no errors:
sudo journalctl -u otelcol-contrib -f
Restart the Collector container:
docker compose up -d
docker logs -f signoz-collection-agent
For docker run, stop and rerun the container with the updated config mount.
Enable self-telemetry metrics in your override-values.yaml for the SigNoz k8s-infra chart:
presets:
selfTelemetry:
endpoint: https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443
insecure: false
insecureSkipVerify: false
signozApiKey: <your-ingestion-key>
metrics:
enabled: true
Use this preset for both the DaemonSet collector (otelAgent) and the deployment collector (otelDeployment).
If you use the OpenTelemetry Helm chart instead of k8s-infra, add the service.telemetry block from Step 1 under config.service.telemetry in your chart values.
Deploy the chart update:
helm upgrade --install <release-name> signoz/k8s-infra \
-n signoz \
-f override-values.yaml
Check the Collector pod logs:
kubectl get pods -n signoz
kubectl logs -n signoz <daemonset-pod-name> -f
Validate
Open Metrics Explorer in SigNoz and search for otelcol_. You should see metrics such as otelcol_exporter_send_failed_spans.
Troubleshooting
No otelcol_ metrics in SigNoz
Check the Collector logs for export errors:
sudo journalctl -u otelcol-contrib -f
For Docker, use docker logs -f signoz-collection-agent. For Kubernetes, use the Collector pod logs.
If the logs show authentication errors, confirm the ingestion key and endpoint region are correct. If they show connection errors, confirm the Collector can reach ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443.
Wait at least one full interval (60 seconds with the config above) after restarting before checking.
Some panels are empty
Check service.telemetry.metrics.level. basic omits batch processor metrics. none disables telemetry. Use normal or detailed.
Duplicate metric points
You can run multiple Collector instances with the same service.name. The dashboard groups them by service.instance.id, which the Collector assigns per process. All instances appear under the shared service name and can be filtered by instance.
Next Steps
- Import the prebuilt OpenTelemetry Collector dashboard.
- Set up alerts.
- Learn more about the OpenTelemetry Collector configuration.
Get Help
If you need help with the steps in this topic, please reach out to us on SigNoz Community Slack. If you are a SigNoz Cloud user, please use in product chat support located at the bottom right corner of your SigNoz instance or contact us at cloud-support@signoz.io.
