SigNoz provides specialized collection agents to help you monitor your Kubernetes clusters and applications. Depending on your specific needs—whether you need full infrastructure monitoring, application auto-instrumentation, or support for serverless environments—you can choose the agent that best fits your use case.
Choose your agent
Collection Agent on Kubernetes
Which agent should I use?
K8s Infra (Recommended)
K8s Infra is the default choice for most environments. It is based on the standard OpenTelemetry Collector Helm chart but comes pre-configured by SigNoz with best practices for:
- Logs: Cluster-level logs from all pods.
- Metrics: Node, pod, and container metrics.
- Traces: Acts as a gateway for application traces.
Use this for full cluster visibility with minimal setup. To send traces, instrument your application and point it to the K8s Infra agent.
OpenTelemetry Operator
Use the OpenTelemetry Operator if you need auto-instrumentation (capturing traces without code changes). It injects instrumentation libraries directly into your application pods.
Recommendation: Start with K8s Infra for standard cluster monitoring (logs, metrics, and traces). Add the OpenTelemetry Operator only if you specifically need auto-instrumentation.
Serverless (EKS Fargate)
Use the Serverless agent for AWS EKS Fargate workloads. Since Fargate abstracts the underlying nodes, this agent runs as a sidecar to collect telemetry.
