#Sending Telemetry Data to the OpenTelemetry Collector without Sidecar Injection

Instead of injecting a sidecar, you can deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector as a standalone deployment. Applications send telemetry data to the Collector service endpoint over the network. This approach allows a centralized Collector instance to receive data from multiple applications.

#Prerequisites

• Alauda build of OpenTelemetry v2 Operator is installed.
• Alauda Build of Jaeger v2 is installed and deployed.
• An active ACP CLI (kubectl) session by a cluster administrator with the cluster-admin role.
• Enable Automatic RBAC creation by following the instructions in Procedure.

#Procedure

1. Deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector instance with the deployment mode by running the following command:

   kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
   apiVersion: opentelemetry.io/v1beta1
   kind: OpenTelemetryCollector
   metadata:
     name: otel
     namespace: observability
   spec:
     mode: deployment
     replicas: 1
     config:
       receivers:
         jaeger:
           protocols:
             grpc: {}
             thrift_binary: {}
             thrift_compact: {}
             thrift_http: {}
         otlp:
           protocols:
             grpc:
               endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
             http:
               endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
         zipkin: {}
       processors:
         batch: {}
         k8sattributes: {}
         memory_limiter:
           check_interval: 1s
           limit_percentage: 80
           spike_limit_percentage: 20
       exporters:
         otlp/traces:
           endpoint: "<jaeger-instance-name>-collector:4317"
           tls:
             insecure: true
       service:
         pipelines:
           traces:
             receivers: [jaeger, otlp, zipkin]
             processors: [memory_limiter, k8sattributes, batch]
             exporters: [otlp/traces]
   EOF
   1. The namespace determines where the Collector resources are created.
   2. The exporter endpoint must point to the Jaeger collector service. Replace <jaeger-instance-name>-collector:4317 with the actual service name of your Jaeger deployment.

2. Set the environment variables in the container with your instrumented application to send telemetry data to the Collector:

   kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
   apiVersion: apps/v1
   kind: Deployment
   metadata:
     name: my-app
     namespace: observability
   spec:
     selector:
       matchLabels:
         app: my-app
     replicas: 1
     template:
       metadata:
         labels:
           app: my-app
       spec:
         containers:
         - name: app
           image: myapp:latest
           env:
           - name: OTEL_SERVICE_NAME
             value: "my-application"
           - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT
             value: "http://otel-collector.observability.svc.cluster.local:4318"
           - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL
             value: "http/protobuf"
           - name: OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER
             value: "parentbased_traceidratio"
           - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TIMEOUT
             value: "20000"
           - name: OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_INSECURE
             value: "true"
   EOF

#Environment Variables

The following table describes the environment variables used to configure the OpenTelemetry SDK in your application: