Skip to main content
Chronosphere Observability Platform supports ingestion of metrics and traces using OpenTelemetry protocol (OTLP) gRPC and HTTP ingestion endpoints.
For best results, ingest telemetry through a local OpenTelemetry Collector or Fluent Bit for processing and batching. Sending telemetry directly from an OpenTelemetry SDK can be less reliable.

​
Requirements

Your OTLP configuration must meet certain requirements.
  • API-Token header: All requests must include the API-Token HTTP header, with the API token of a valid service account with write permissions as the value.
  • OTLP version support: Only v1.0 and higher are supported.
  • Supported compression methods: Only gzip, snappy, and zstd are supported, and Chronosphere recommends zstd.
  • Encryption: All requests must be encrypted using TLS.
  • Payload requirements:
    • Compressed payloads should be smaller than 16MB.
    • Metric payloads must contain fewer than 10,000 items.
    • For details, see Optimize the batch processor.

​
Recommendations

Chronosphere recommends setting the timeout value for a metrics or trace request to 30 seconds, and to enable retries to prevent transient network errors from causing data loss. Chronosphere recommends using gRPC instead of HTTP when possible, because gRPC is a more efficient protocol for sending telemetry to the Observability Platform.

​
Optimize the batch processor

The OpenTelemetry Batch Processor defines batch limits by the quantity of items, not the size of the batch in bytes. Configure the batch processor as follows to prevent batches from exceeding the maximum payload size:
  • send_batch_size: Set to 1000 to trigger sending a batch when it reaches 1,000 items.
  • send_batch_max_size: Set to 2000 to force splitting the batch if it exceeds more than 2,000 items.
  • timeout: Set to 1s to send any items in the buffer after 1 second.

​
OTLP endpoint URLs

Observability Platform provides gRPC and HTTP endpoints for metrics and traces.
Telemetry typegRPC EndpointHTTP endpoint URL
MetricsCOMPANY.chronosphere.io:443https://COMPANY.chronosphere.io/data/opentelemetry/v1/metrics
TracesCOMPANY.chronosphere.io:443https://COMPANY.chronosphere.io/data/opentelemetry/v1/traces
Replace COMPANY with the name of your company as it appears in the subdomain of the Observability Platform URL. OpenTelemetry exporters complete the path based on the telemetry type. For the otlphttp exporter, set the endpoint base path as follows: 
exporters:
  otlphttp/chronosphere:
    endpoint: https://COMPANY.chronosphere.io/data/opentelemetry/
    ...
For an example OTLP exporter configuration, see Configure the OpenTelemetry Collector.

​
Metrics partial success responses

If a metrics ingestion request succeeds but any series are rejected, the ingester returns an OTLP partial success response that includes a count (rejected_data_points) and a description (error_message). The verbosity of the description is controlled by the Chronosphere-Metrics-Validation-Response header, which can be set to SHORT, SUMMARY, or DETAILED in the OTel Collector configuration. When a partial success response is returned, the client must not retry the request. All valid series from the request have been accepted, and the rejected series are dropped. For details about the response’s design, see the OTLP Partial Success Specification.