Ingest from OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework for collecting, processing, and exporting telemetry data (metrics, traces, and logs) from your applications and infrastructure.

By integrating OpenTelemetry with Tinybird, you can analyze observability data in real time, build dashboards, and enrich it with other data sources.

Some common use cases for sending OpenTelemetry data to Tinybird include:

  1. Centralizing metrics, traces, and logs for unified analytics.
  2. Building custom dashboards and alerts on top of observability data.
  3. Enriching telemetry with business or application data.

Read on to learn how to send data from OpenTelemetry to Tinybird.

Before you start

Before you connect OpenTelemetry to Tinybird, ensure:

  • You have a Tinybird workspace.
  • You have a Tinybird Token with append permissions to the target Data Sources.
  • You are running the Tinybird distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector.

You can find the latest release of the Tinybird OpenTelemetry Collector here:

Use the Tinybird OpenTelemetry project template

To get started quickly, you can use the Tinybird OpenTelemetry project template. This template provides ready-to-use Data Sources and Pipes for storing and analyzing your telemetry data in Tinybird.

Below is an example configuration for the Tinybird OpenTelemetry Collector to export metrics, traces, and logs to Tinybird:

config.yaml
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318

processors:
  batch:
    timeout: 10s
    send_batch_size: 8192

exporters:
  tinybird:
    endpoint: ${OTEL_TINYBIRD_API_HOST}         # Your Events API endpoint, e.g. https://api.us-east.aws.tinybird.co
    token: ${OTEL_TINYBIRD_TOKEN}               # Token with append permissions
    sending_queue:
      enabled: true
      queue_size: 104857600                # Total memory buffer in bytes (100 MB)
      sizer: bytes
      batch:
        flush_timeout: 5s                  # Max wait time before flushing
        min_size: 1024000                  # Min batch size: 1 MB
        max_size: 8388608                  # Max batch size: 8 MB (Events API limit is 10 MB)
    retry_on_failure:
      enabled: true
    metrics_sum:
      datasource: otel_metrics_sum
    metrics_histogram:
      datasource: otel_metrics_histogram
    metrics_exponential_histogram:
      datasource: otel_metrics_exponential_histogram
    metrics_gauge:
      datasource: otel_metrics_gauge
    traces:
      datasource: otel_traces
    logs:
      datasource: otel_logs

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [tinybird]

    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [tinybird]

    logs:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [tinybird]

Environment variables

  • OTEL_TINYBIRD_API_HOST: The API host for your Tinybird workspace (e.g., https://api.tinybird.co).
  • OTEL_TINYBIRD_TOKEN: A Tinybird token with append permissions to the target Data Sources (otel_metrics, otel_traces, otel_logs).

You can create a token in the Tinybird UI under Tokens. Make sure it has the required append permissions for the Data Sources you want to ingest into.

Run the Collector

Using the binary

Precompiled binaries for Linux and macOS are available for both amd64 and arm64 architectures.

Download them from the GitHub Releases page.

./otelcontribcol_linux_amd64 --config config.yaml

Using Docker

docker run \
  --platform linux/amd64 \
  -v $(pwd)/config.yaml:/etc/otelcol-contrib/config.yaml \
  -p 4317:4317 \
  -p 4318:4318 \
  -e OTEL_TINYBIRD_API_HOST="${OTEL_TINYBIRD_API_HOST}" \
  -e OTEL_TINYBIRD_TOKEN="${OTEL_TINYBIRD_TOKEN}" \
  tinybirdco/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:v0.128.0

Use the --platform linux/amd64 flag to ensure compatibility when running on ARM-based systems like Apple Silicon Macs.

Troubleshooting

To troubleshoot your setup, edit your config.yaml to enable detailed logging from the Collector. You can also check the Tinybird Service Data Sources to confirm data is arriving in your Workspace.

To enable detailed logging, define the debug exporter and add it to your service pipelines:

config.yaml
#(...)
exporters:
  debug:
    verbosity: detailed
exporters:
  tinybird:
    endpoint: ${OTEL_TINYBIRD_API_HOST}

#(...)
service:
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [debug,tinybird]
#(...)

You can send mock data with otelgen.

Next steps

For more details on the available configuration options, see the Tinybird OpenTelemetry Collector documentation.

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