Ingesting with OpenTelemetry

All data is ingested into ClickStack via an OpenTelemetry (OTel) collector instance, which acts as the primary entry point for logs, metrics, traces, and session data. We recommend using the official ClickStack distribution of the collector for this instance.

For Self-managed ClickHouse Observability, see the Getting started guide.

Users send data to this collector from language SDKs or through data collection agents collecting infrastructure metrics and logs (such OTel collectors in an agent role or other technologies e.g. Fluentd or Vector). For teams that want a managed OpenTelemetry pipeline, Bindplane offers an OpenTelemetry-native solution with a native ClickStack destination, simplifying telemetry collection, processing, and routing.

Sending OpenTelemetry data

The ClickStack OpenTelemetry collector is included in most ClickStack distributions, including:

Installing ClickStack OpenTelemetry collector

The ClickStack OTel collector can also be deployed standalone, independent of other components of the stack. If you’re using the ClickStack UI only distribution, you’re responsible for delivering data into ClickHouse yourself. This can be done by:

Running your own OpenTelemetry collector and pointing it at ClickHouse - see below.
Sending directly to ClickHouse using alternative tooling, such as Vector, Fluentd etc, or even the default OTel contrib collector distribution.

We recommend using the ClickStack OpenTelemetry collectorThis allows you to benefit from standardized ingestion, enforced schemas, and out-of-the-box compatibility with the ClickStack UI. Using the default schema enables automatic source detection and preconfigured column mappings.

For further details see “Deploying the collector”.

Sending data to the collector

To send data to ClickStack, point your OpenTelemetry instrumentation to the following endpoints made available by the OpenTelemetry collector:

HTTP (OTLP): http://localhost:4318
gRPC (OTLP): localhost:4317

For language SDKs and telemetry libraries that support OpenTelemetry, you can simply set OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable in your application:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318

In addition, an authorization header containing the API ingestion key is required. You can find the key in the ClickStack UI under Team Settings → API Keys. For language SDKs, this can then either be set by an init function or via anOTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS environment variable e.g.:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS='authorization=<YOUR_INGESTION_API_KEY>'

Agents should likewise include this authorization header in any OTLP communication. For example, if deploying a contrib distribution of the OTel collector in the agent role, they can use the OTLP exporter. An example agent config consuming this structured log file, is shown below. Note the need to specify an authorization key - see <YOUR_API_INGESTION_KEY>.

# clickhouse-agent-config.yaml
receivers:
  filelog:
    include:
      - /opt/data/logs/access-structured.log
    start_at: beginning
    operators:
      - type: json_parser
        timestamp:
          parse_from: attributes.time_local
          layout: '%Y-%m-%d %H:%M:%S'
exporters:
  # HTTP setup
  otlphttp/hdx:
    endpoint: 'http://localhost:4318'
    headers:
      authorization: <YOUR_API_INGESTION_KEY>
    compression: gzip
 
  # gRPC setup (alternative)
  otlp/hdx:
    endpoint: 'localhost:4317'
    headers:
      authorization: <YOUR_API_INGESTION_KEY>
    compression: gzip
processors:
  batch:
    timeout: 5s
    send_batch_size: 10000
service:
  telemetry:
    metrics:
      address: 0.0.0.0:9888 # Modified as 2 collectors running on same host
  pipelines:
    logs:
      receivers: [filelog]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlphttp/hdx]

Introduction

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Sending OpenTelemetry data

Installing ClickStack OpenTelemetry collector

Sending data to the collector

​Sending OpenTelemetry data

​Installing ClickStack OpenTelemetry collector

​Sending data to the collector

Sending OpenTelemetry data

Installing ClickStack OpenTelemetry collector

Sending data to the collector