Use the OTel Collector transform processor to modify telemetry with OTTL statements
domain: opentelemetry.io · 5 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗
Steps
Add the transform processor to the Collector config and specify the context (span, metric, log, etc.) for each statement block
Write OTTL statements to set, delete, or rename attributes using the set and delete_key functions
Use conditional where clauses in OTTL to apply transformations only to matching telemetry items
Test OTTL statements in a staging Collector instance before deploying to production pipelines
Chain multiple transform processor blocks in a pipeline when separation of concerns improves readability
Known gotchas
OTTL syntax errors cause the Collector to fail at startup; validate configurations with the Collector's validate subcommand or a dry-run before deploying
Modifying high-cardinality attributes without careful scoping can accidentally increase cardinality on downstream metrics
The transform processor operates on a copy of the data in memory; very large batch transforms can cause memory spikes in the Collector
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