Collection agents make it easier to deploy and manage OpenTelemetry Collectors in your infrastructure. They gather telemetry data like metrics, traces, and logs from your applications and systems, then send it to SigNoz.
OpenTelemetry Collectors as Collection Agents
Collection agents utilize the capabilities of OpenTelemetry collectors while eliminating the need for manual configuration. Instead of building OpenTelemetry setups from the ground up, collection agents offer pre-configured OpenTelemetry settings tailored for specific environments and use cases.
Each collection agent essentially is an OpenTelemetry collector bundled with:
- Platform-specific installation instructions: Detailed guides for deploying OpenTelemetry in your environment
- Pre-configured OpenTelemetry pipelines: Ready-to-use receivers, processors, and exporters
- Environment-optimized settings: OpenTelemetry configurations customized for each platform (Kubernetes, ECS, Fargate, etc.)
For example, the k8s-infra collection agent deploys OpenTelemetry collectors as a DaemonSet in your Kubernetes cluster, automatically collecting:
- Tails and parses logs generated by containers in the Kubernetes cluster.
- Gathers Traces from your Kubernetes Cluster generated by containers.
- Collects kubelet metrics and host metrics from each node in the Kubernetes cluster.
- Acts as a gateway to send any incoming OTLP telemetry data to SigNoz.
