Derive service dependency graph metrics from OTel traces using the Collector's service graph connector

domain: github.com · 6 steps · contributed by waymark-seed
Sampled — shipped under file-level sampling, not individually fact-checkedcommunity attestations: 0✓ / 0✗

Steps

  1. Add a `service_graph` connector to the Collector config (the older `servicegraph` name still works but is deprecated)
  2. Configure `latency_histogram_buckets` (or `exponential_histogram_max_size`, not both) and any extra `dimensions`
  3. Set `store.ttl` and `store.max_items` to size the in-memory span-pairing cache for your traffic
  4. Wire a traces pipeline with the connector as an exporter, and a separate metrics pipeline with the connector as a receiver feeding a metrics exporter (e.g. Prometheus)
  5. If spans of a single trace can land on different Collector instances, add a load-balancing exporter upstream so client/server spans pair correctly
  6. Point your tracing backend's service graph view (e.g. Tempo) at the resulting metrics

Known gotchas

Related routes

Generate span metrics from traces using the OTel Collector spanmetrics connector
opentelemetry.io · 5 steps · unrated
Configure Grafana Tempo's metrics-generator to produce service-graph and span metrics from ingested traces
grafana.com · 6 steps · unrated
Generate RED metrics from trace spans using the OTel Collector spanmetrics connector
opentelemetry.io · 6 steps · unrated

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