Transform an installed Elastic Agent to run as an OTel Collector
editTransform an installed Elastic Agent to run as an OTel Collector
editThis functionality is in technical preview and may be changed or removed in a future release. Elastic will work to fix any issues, but features in technical preview are not subject to the support SLA of official GA features.
If you have a currently installed standalone Elastic Agent, it can be configured to run as an OTel Collector. This allows you to run Elastic Agent both as a service and in an OTel Collector mode.
In order to configure an installed standalone Elastic Agent to run as an OTel Collector, it’s enough to include a valid OTel Collector configuration in the elastic-agent.yml file, as shown in the following example.
Example: configure Elastic Agent to ingest host logs and metrics into Elasticsearch using the OTel Collector
editPrerequisites
You’ll need the following:
- A suitable Elasticsearch API key for authenticating on Elasticsearch
- An installed standalone Elastic Agent
-
A valid OTel Collector configuration. In this example we’ll use the OTel sample configuration included in the Elastic Agent repository:
otel_samples/platformlogs_hostmetrics.yml.
Steps
To change a running standalone Elastic Agent to run as an OTel Collector:
-
Create a directory where the OTel Collector can save its state. In this example we use
<{agent} install directory>/data/otelcol. -
Open the
<{agent} install directory>/otel_samples/platformlogs_hostmetrics.ymlfile for editing. -
Set environment details to be used by OTel Collector:
-
Option 1: Define environment variables for the Elastic Agent service:
-
ELASTIC_ENDPOINT: The URL of the Elasticsearch instance where data will be sent -
ELASTIC_API_KEY: The API Key to use to authenticate with Elasticsearch -
STORAGE_DIR: The directory where the OTel Collector can persist its state
-
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Option 2: Replace the environment variable references in the sample configuration with the corresponding values:
-
${env:ELASTIC_ENDPOINT}:The URL of the Elasticsearch instance where data will be sent -
${env:ELASTIC_API_KEY}: The API Key to use to authenticate with Elasticsearch -
${env:STORAGE_DIR}: The directory where the OTel Collector can persist its state
-
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-
Save the opened OTel configuration as
elastic-agent.yml, overwriting the default configuration of the installed agent. -
Run the
elastic-agent statuscommand to verify that the new configuration has been correctly applied:elastic-agent status
The OTel Collector running configuration should appear under
elastic-agentkey (note theextensionsandpipelinekeys):┌─ fleet │ └─ status: (STOPPED) Not enrolled into Fleet └─ elastic-agent ├─ status: (HEALTHY) Running ├─ extensions │ ├─ status: StatusOK │ └─ extension:file_storage │ └─ status: StatusOK ├─ pipeline:logs/platformlogs │ ├─ status: StatusOK │ ├─ exporter:elasticsearch/otel │ │ └─ status: StatusOK │ ├─ processor:resourcedetection │ │ └─ status: StatusOK │ └─ receiver:filelog/platformlogs │ └─ status: StatusOK └─ pipeline:metrics/hostmetrics ├─ status: StatusOK ├─ exporter:elasticsearch/ecs │ └─ status: StatusOK ├─ processor:attributes/dataset │ └─ status: StatusOK ├─ processor:elasticinframetrics │ └─ status: StatusOK ├─ processor:resource/process │ └─ status: StatusOK ├─ processor:resourcedetection │ └─ status: StatusOK └─ receiver:hostmetrics/system └─ status: StatusOK - Congratulations! Host logs and metrics are now being collected and ingested by the Elastic Agent service running an OTel Collector instance. For further details about OpenTelemetry collector components supported by Elastic Agent, refer to the Elastic Distribution for OpenTelemetry Collector README.