Collector Config Tool

Overview

The Collector Config Tool (aka Otto) is a single-user web application to help you configure the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Stability Level: Development

This tool is currently in development. Feel free to poke around, and some things will work, but other features might not.

Starting the Otto server

To start Otto:

Download or clone a copy of the collector-config-tool.
Make sure the current working directory is the root of this source tree.
Run go run ./cmd/otto
Open localhost:8888 in a desktop browser (only Chrome is officially supported at this time, though other browsers may also work).

Creating a component configuration

When Otto loads, it presents you with a select menu where you can choose which kind of Collector pipeline you want to create: Metrics, Logs, or Traces. When you select a pipeline type, Otto populates the UI with the components that support the selected pipeline type. At this point, you can select a component.

When you select a component, Otto creates a dynamic form for you to configure it. This form is pre-populated with default values, which appear as placeholder text or a select box with the default value indicated. You can leave these blank to accept the defaults or change them to provide your own values. If you are unsure about what a field means, or what type of data it accepts, you can hover your mouse over the name of the field to view documentation for that field in a tooltip.

Configurable subsections appear as "configure" links in the form, which, when clicked, display a sub-form and disable the parent form's links and "Apply" button. Any visible sub-form must be applied (by clicking the "Apply" button) before its parent form can be applied. When the top-level form is applied, your inputs are converted into a YAML snippet for the component, which may be edited manually. At this point, you can press the "Start" button, which will start the component in an Otto pipeline, in the same environment in which the Otto server is running.

Once a component is running, Otto will listen to its output and display the output in a table. Each row in the table corresponds to a single message, which may comprise a significant amount of information. To see a JSON dump of all of this information, each row may be clicked, and the row's data will be displayed in full in a tab next to the "Messages" table. To navigate back to the Messages table, click the Messages tab.

In a similar manner, processors and exporters may be added to the pipeline as well. Otto will connect these components to the Otto pipeline, so the output of a receiver will be sent to the input of a processor, in addition to both of them sending their messages to the Otto web application.

Creating a Collector configuration

At any point, you may click the "Generate Collector YAML" button, which will create a Collector configuration YAML document and display it in a text area.

Licensed under the Apache License, Version 2.0 (the "License"); you may not use this file except in compliance with the License. You may obtain a copy of the License at

http://www.apache.org/licenses/LICENSE-2.0