table of contents Table of contents

Using the OpenTelemetry collector

Using the OpenTelemetry collector is the best way to manage and route telemetry data from / to Checkly. It requires a little setting up, but it’s worth it.

In this guide we assume you already have an OTel collector running and configured. If you don’t, please reference the Open Telemetry Collector getting started documentation

Step 1: Get the API endpoint and an API key

Step 2: Sending traces to Checkly

Sending trace to Checkly is very simple with the OpenTelemetry collector. There are three sections you need to add to your collector configuration file:

  1. Create a filter that will remove all spans that don’t have checkly=true in the trace state.
  2. Create a new exporter with the Checkly API endpoint and API key.
  3. Hook the exporter and filter into a new trace pipeline.
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      http:

processors:
  batch:
  filter/checkly:
    error_mode: ignore
    traces:
      span:
        # remove all spans that the trace state doesn't have an object
        # which key is "tracetest" and value is "true"
        - 'trace_state["checkly"] != "true"'

exporters:
  logging:
    loglevel: debug
  otlp/checkly:
    endpoint: otel.eu-west-1.checklyhq.com:443
    headers:
      authorization: Bearer ot_132966335ad74b18bf424b737e9abc26
      "Content-Type": "application/json"

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [filter/checkly, batch]
      exporters: [logging, otlp/checkly]

Last updated on April 30, 2024. You can contribute to this documentation by editing this page on Github