VM Collection Agent - Configure

This guide walks you through configuring the OpenTelemetry Collector binary on your virtual machine to send telemetry data to SigNoz. Add or merge each snippet below into your existing collector config and enable the new receivers or processors in the relevant pipelines.

Prerequisites

• OpenTelemetry Collector binary installed (see Installation guide)
• SigNoz Cloud account or self-hosted SigNoz instance
• Access to create and edit the OpenTelemetry Collector configuration file (see your installation method for where it lives and how to apply changes)

Resource Detection

The resource detection processor adds host and cloud metadata to your telemetry so you can filter and group by environment, hostname, or cloud provider in SigNoz.

Use the following configuration on a VM. On AWS, GCP, or Azure, add the corresponding cloud detector before the system detector.

processors:
  resourcedetection:
    # Allow using OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES env var, env detector adds custom labels.
    detectors: [env, system]
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      processors: [resourcedetection]
    metrics:
      processors: [resourcedetection]
    logs:
      processors: [resourcedetection]

Cloud-specific detectors

• AWS EC2: Use detectors: [env, ec2, system] so the collector detects cloud.provider, cloud.region, host.id, and related attributes.
• GCP: Use detectors: [env, gcp, system] for GCP VM metadata.
• Azure: Use detectors: [env, azure, system] for Azure VM metadata.

Send data from applications to collector on VM

Configure the OTLP receiver so instrumented applications on the VM can send traces, metrics, and logs to the collector.

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]
    logs:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]

Where and how to send data from your application

Set your app’s OTLP endpoint to the collector (gRPC 4317, HTTP 4318).

# Same VM
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://localhost:4317"
# Different host
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT="http://<VM_HOST_OR_IP>:4317"
# Set the service name
export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES="service.name=my-app"

See Instrumentation for language-specific setup.

Collect host metrics from the VM

Use the hostmetrics receiver to scrape CPU, memory, disk, filesystem, load, and network metrics from the VM.

receivers:
  hostmetrics:
    collection_interval: 60s
    scrapers:
      cpu: {}
      disk: {}
      load: {}
      filesystem: {}
      memory: {}
      network: {}
      paging: {}
      process:
        mute_process_name_error: true
        mute_process_exe_error: true
        mute_process_io_error: true
      processes: {}

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp, hostmetrics]

You can enable only the scrapers you need or tune collection_interval.

Collect logs from files on the VM

Use the filelog receiver to tail log files on the VM and send them as log records to SigNoz (application or system log files).

Example: single log file

receivers:
  filelog:
    include: [/path/to/your/application.log] # <-- Replace with your log file path
    start_at: end
    include_file_name: false
    include_file_path: true

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [filelog]

Example: multiple files with glob

receivers:
  filelog:
    include:
      - /path/to/your/application-logs/*.log
    start_at: end
    include_file_name: true
    include_file_path: true

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [filelog]

Example: JSON log files

receivers:
  filelog:
    include: [/path/to/your/application-logs/*.json]
    start_at: end
    operators:
      - type: json_parser
        parse_from: body

service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [filelog]

Collect syslogs

To collect system logs (e.g. via rsyslog) on the VM using the OpenTelemetry Collector’s syslog receiver, see Collecting Syslogs via OpenTelemetry Collector.

Collect systemd (journald) logs

To collect logs from systemd’s journal on Linux using the journald receiver, see Collecting systemd logs (journald).

Collect Windows Event logs

To stream Windows Event logs (Application, Security, System channels) to SigNoz using the Windows Event Log receiver, see Windows Events log to SigNoz.

Forward from Fluent Bit, Fluentd, or Logstash

• If you already use any of the following log forwarders on your VM, you can forward logs to the OpenTelemetry Collector and then to SigNoz:
  • Fluent Bit to SigNoz
  • Fluentd to SigNoz
  • Logstash to SigNoz

Validate

Dry run the collector to validate your config before applying changes. The binary path and config path depend on your installation method.

Example for DEB/RPM (binary at /usr/bin/otelcol-contrib, config at /etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml):

/usr/bin/otelcol-contrib --config /etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml --dry-run

For manual tarball installs, use ./otelcol-contrib (or .\otelcol-contrib.exe on Windows) and the path to your config file.

If the config is valid, the command exits without errors. Then apply the changes and restart the collector. Confirm data in Traces, Metrics, or Logs (and Infrastructure for host metrics) depending on what you enabled.

Apply Changes

After editing the config:

1. Copy the configuration to the path used by your installation method (e.g. systemd unit Environment or the path passed to --config).
2. Restart or start the collector as described in the install guide.
3. View collector logs to confirm there are no configuration errors.

Next Steps

• VM Collection Agent Overview
• Telemetry Data Requirements for Infrastructure Monitoring
• Collector Configuration Best Practices