Cardinal OpenTelemetry Collector

Running a Cardinal OpenTelemetry Collector within your VPC/infrastructure enables you to use Chip while only sending < 0.01% of your telemetry data to Cardinal.

Recommended if your telemetry data volume is high
Runs downstream of your existing OpenTelemetry Collector, within your own VPC/infrastructure
Sends only minimal exemplars and aggregates to Cardinal, not raw telemetry data

(If your telemetry data volume is low, or you prefer to not install a new Collector, refer to the OTLP Export to Cardinal section for an alternative)

Install the Cardinal Kubernetes Operator

The Cardinal Kubernetes Operator simplifies the deployment and management of Cardinal OpenTelemetry Collectors on Kubernetes.

Prerequisites

Helm (opens in a new tab) v3 or later
Kubernetes cluster with permissions to install CRDs, ClusterRoles, and ClusterRoleBindings

Install the Operator

helm install chq-operator oci://public.ecr.aws/cardinalhq.io/cardinalhq-operator \
  --namespace chq-operator \
  --create-namespace

This command installs the Operator, its necessary roles, and the CRD for Collector resources in your cluster.

Deploy a Collector

Next, let's deploy a Cardinal OpenTelemetry Collector.

Sign-in to Cardinal, (opens in a new tab) and select the Pipelines tab in the left sidebar.
Click the Add a Collector... button.
Follow the steps to create a Kubernetes Secret for your Cardinal API key, and apply the CRD manifest to deploy your new Collector.

Send Data to the Collector

If you have an existing OpenTelemetry Collector, add an OTLP Exporter to its pipeline to send data to this Cardinal OpenTelemetry Collector's OTLP Receiver.

exporters:
  otlphttp/cardinal-collector:
    endpoint: http://<your-k8s-ingress-or-service-endpoint>
 
service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal-collector]
 
    logs:
      exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal-collector]
 
    traces:
      exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal-collector]

If you don't have an existing OpenTelemetry Collector, point your application OpenTelemetry SDKs to this Collector's OTLP Receiver using the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable, as outlined in the language-specific SDK documentation.

Export to Cardinal Google Cloud Platform