Ingesting data into ClickStack
All data is ingested into ClickStack via an OpenTelemetry (OTel) collector, which acts as the primary entry point for logs, metrics, traces, and session data.
This collector exposes two OTLP endpoints:
- HTTP - port
4318 - gRPC - port
4317
Users can send data to these endpoints either directly from language SDKs or OTel-compatible data collection agents e.g. other OTel collectors collecting infrastructure metrics and logs.
More specifically:
-
Language SDKs are responsible for collecting telemetry from within your application - most notably traces and logs - and exporting this data to the OpenTelemetry collector, via the OTLP endpoint, which handles ingestion into ClickHouse. For more details on the language SDKs available with ClickStack see SDKs.
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Data collection agents are agents deployed at the edge — on servers, Kubernetes nodes, or alongside applications. They collect infrastructure telemetry (e.g. logs, metrics) or receive events directly from applications instrumented with SDKs. In this case, the agent runs on the same host as the application, often as a sidecar or DaemonSet. These agents forward data to the central ClickStack OTel collector, which acts as a gateway, typically deployed once per cluster, data center, or region. The gateway receives OTLP events from agents or applications and handles ingestion into ClickHouse. See OTel collector for more details. These agents can be other instances of the OTel collector or alternative technologies such as Fluentd or Vector.
While ClickStack offers its own language SDKs and a custom OpenTelemetry, with enhanced telemetry and features, users can also use their existing OpenTelemetry SDKs and agents seamlessly.
