Agent deployment pattern
Send signals to Collectors and then export to backends
In the agent deployment pattern, telemetry signals can come from
- Applications instrumented with an OpenTelemetry SDK using the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP).
- Collectors using the OTLP exporter.
The signals are sent to a Collector instance that runs alongside the application or on the same host, such as a sidecar or DaemonSet.
Each client-side SDK or downstream Collector is configured with the address of a Collector instance:
- In the application, the SDK is configured to send OTLP data to a Collector.
- The Collector is configured to send telemetry data to one or more backends.