opentelemetry

Collect logs and metrics using the guided onboarding

The guided onboarding in Elasticsearch Service or a serverless Observability project walks you through collecting logs and metrics using the Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry (EDOT) Collector. To configure the EDOT Collector manually, refer to the manual configuration docs.

Before you begin

The onboarding has the following requirements:

• The Admin role or higher is required to onboard system logs and metrics. To learn more, refer to Assign user roles and privileges.
• Root privileges on the host are required to run the OpenTelemetry collector used in this quickstart.
• The guided onboarding provides out-of-the-box deployment and configurations for Kubernetes, Linux, and MacOS systems.

Collect your logs and metrics

Follow these steps to collect logs and metrics using the EDOT Collector:

1. Open an Elastic Cloud deployment or a serverless Observability project.
2. To open the guided onboarding, either:
   1. In an Elastic Cloud deployment, open Kibana, and go to Observability → Add Data.
   2. In a serverless Observability project, go to Add Data.
3. Select Collect and analyze logs, and then select OpenTelemetry.
4. Select the appropriate platform, and complete the following:
   1. For MacOS and Linux, copy the command, open a terminal on your host, and run the command to download and configure the OpenTelemetry collector.
   2. For Kubernetes, download the manifest.
5. Copy the command under Step 2:
   1. For MacOS and Linux, run the command in your terminal to start the EDOT Collector.
   2. For Kubernetes, run the command from the directory where you downloaded the manifest to install the EDOT Collector on every node of your cluster.

Logs are collected from setup onward, so you won’t see logs that occurred before starting the EDOT Collector. The default log path is /var/log/*. To update the path, modify otel.yml.

Under Visualize your data, you’ll see links to Logs Explorer to view your logs and Hosts to view your host metrics.

Limitations

Refer to Elastic OpenTelemetry Collector limitations for known limitations when using the EDOT Collector.