Migrate from existing OpenTelemetry

If you already have OpenTelemetry instrumentation in your applications, you can easily switch to SigNoz as your observability backend. This guide will walk you through the simple configuration changes needed to start sending your metrics, traces/APM, and logs to either SigNoz Cloud or Self-Hosted SigNoz.

Prerequisites

• Applications instrumented with OpenTelemetry SDKs or OpenTelemetry Collectors
• An active SigNoz account (for Cloud) or a running SigNoz instance (for Self-Hosted)
• Access to modify your application configuration or environment variables

Configuration

Step 1: Obtain Connection Details

1. Log into your SigNoz Cloud account.
2. Navigate to Settings → Ingestion Settings.
3. Note your Ingestion Key and Ingestion URL.

Step 2: Update OpenTelemetry Configuration

Set the following environment variables for your application:

# Replace with your SigNoz cloud region
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443"

# Replace with your SigNoz ingestion key
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key>"

If you are defining the OTLP configuration directly in your code (instead of using environment variables), update the OTLP exporter settings:

• Endpoint: https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443
• Headers: Set signoz-ingestion-key to <your-ingestion-key>

Note: The exact syntax depends on the language SDK. Check the SigNoz Instrumentation docs for examples.

If you are using an OpenTelemetry Collector, update your exporter configuration:

exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443
    headers:
      signoz-ingestion-key: <your-ingestion-key>
    tls:
      insecure: false

Verify these values:

• <region>: Your SigNoz Cloud region
• <your-ingestion-key>: Your SigNoz ingestion key

Validate

1. Restart your application (and Collector if applicable) with the new configuration.
2. Generate test data by using your application.
3. Access SigNoz Dashboard:
   • Cloud: SigNoz Cloud login
   • Self-Hosted: http://your-signoz-host:3301
4. Verify data flow:
   • Check Traces, Metrics, Logs in SigNoz.

Next Steps

• Send Traces
• Send Logs
• Send Metrics
• Set up Alerts
• Create Dashboards