Switch from Direct Export to OpenTelemetry Collector

This guide shows you how to switch from sending telemetry data directly from your application to SigNoz to routing it through an OpenTelemetry Collector.

Prerequisites

• Your application is already instrumented with OpenTelemetry and sending data to SigNoz
• Access to modify your application's environment variables or configuration
• An OpenTelemetry Collector deployed in your environment — see get started with collection agents

Not sure if you need a Collector? See Why use the OpenTelemetry Collector?

Step 1. Configure the Collector to forward to SigNoz

Update your Collector's configuration file to forward data to SigNoz.

Please follow the configuration guide to configure your OpenTelemetry Collector. You will need to update the endpoint with your Ingestion Endpoint and add your Ingestion Key to the headers.

Step 2. Update your application environment variables

Update your application to send to the Collector instead of directly to SigNoz:

Before (direct to SigNoz Cloud):

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443"
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS="signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key>"

After (via Collector):

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://localhost:4318"
# Remove the ingestion key - the Collector handles it now
unset OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS

Step 3. Restart and validate

1. Restart your application with the updated configuration.
2. Check the Collector logs to verify it's receiving and exporting data.
3. In SigNoz, navigate to Traces or Metrics and verify new data is appearing.

exporters:
  debug:
    verbosity: detailed
  otlphttp:
    endpoint: https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443
    headers:
      signoz-ingestion-key: <your-ingestion-key>

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [debug, otlphttp]

echo $OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT
# Should output: http://localhost:4318 (or your Collector host)

netstat -tuln | grep -E '4317|4318'

kubectl get svc otel-collector -n observability
kubectl get endpoints otel-collector -n observability

Next steps

Now that data flows through the Collector, you can add processors for:

• Filtering — Drop health checks or debug data. See drop spans, drop logs, drop metrics
• PII scrubbing — Remove sensitive data. See PII scrubbing for logs and traces
• Enrichment — Add resource attributes. See resource detection processor
• Advanced configuration — Explore all options in the Collector configuration guide

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.