App Instrumentation

Cardinal Data Lake is OpenTelemetry-native. To send telemetry from your applications, instrument them with the open-source OpenTelemetry SDKs and point them at Cardinal Data Lake’s OTLP ingest endpoint.

Pick your language

• Node.js
• Python
• Java
• Go
• React.js

Get an API key

All ingest into Cardinal Data Lake is authenticated with an API key sent in the x-cardinalhq-api-key header.

1. Sign in to the Cardinal dashboard .
2. Open Settings → API Keys.
3. Click Create API key, give it a name, and copy the value. Keys are shown once at creation — copy yours immediately.

API keys are scoped to a Cardinal Data Lake workspace. If your org has multiple managed Cardinal Data Lake integrations, you’ll see one panel per workspace and mint a key under the workspace whose ingest endpoint you intend to use.

Find your ingest endpoint

The ingest endpoint is per-workspace. Find it in the Cardinal dashboard under Settings → Integrations → Cardinal Data Lake, or use the regional endpoint pattern provided to you at provisioning:

https://otelhttp.intake.<your-region>.aws.cardinalhq.io

Substitute <your-region> with the AWS region where your Cardinal Data Lake workspace runs.

Already running an OpenTelemetry Collector?

If your applications already export to a local OpenTelemetry Collector, getting onboarded to Cardinal Data Lake is as simple as adding an OTLP exporter that forwards to Cardinal Data Lake.

exporters:
  otlphttp/data-lake:
    endpoint: https://otelhttp.intake.<your-region>.aws.cardinalhq.io
    headers:
      x-cardinalhq-api-key: <your-api-key>
 
service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      exporters: [otlphttp/data-lake]
    logs:
      exporters: [otlphttp/data-lake]
    traces:
      exporters: [otlphttp/data-lake]

For self-hosted Cardinal Data Lake deployments where collectors write directly to your S3 bucket, see OpenTelemetry Collectors instead.