SignalFx Forwarder (deprecated)

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the SignalFx forwarder. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

Note: This integration is deprecated. If you’re using the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector and want to forward data to Splunk Observability Cloud, use the native OTLP receiver. See more at OTLP receiver GitHub documentation.

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the signalfx-forwarder monitor type to run an HTTP server that listens for data points and trace spans, and forward them to Splunk Observability Cloud. This integration supports the latest formats for data points and spans that the Splunk ingest API endpoint supports.

This integration is available on Linux and Windows.

Benefits

After you configure the integration, you can access these features:

View metrics. You can create your own custom dashboards, and most monitors provide built-in dashboards as well. For information about dashboards, see View dashboards in Splunk Observability Cloud.
View a data-driven visualization of the physical servers, virtual machines, AWS instances, and other resources in your environment that are visible to Infrastructure Monitoring. For information about navigators, see Use navigators in Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.
Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Search the Metric Finder and Metadata Catalog.

Installation

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
- Install on Kubernetes
- Install on Linux
Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.
Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration

To use this integration of a Smart Agent monitor with the Collector:

Include the Smart Agent receiver in your configuration file.
Add the monitor type to the Collector configuration, both in the receiver and pipelines sections.
- See how to Use Smart Agent monitors with the Collector.
- See how to set up the Smart Agent receiver.
- For a list of common configuration options, refer to Common configuration settings for monitors.
- Learn more about the Collector at Get started: Understand and use the Collector.

Example

To activate this integration, add the following to your Collector configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/signalfx-forwarder:
    type: signalfx-forwarder
    ... # Additional config

Next, add the monitor to the service.pipelines.metrics.receivers section of your configuration file:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/signalfx-forwarder]
    traces:
      receivers: [smartagent/signalfx-forwarder]

Note that the defaultSpanTagsFromEndpoint and extraSpanTagsFromEndpoint config options are not compatible with the signalfx-forwarder receiver.

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for the signalfx-forwarder integration:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`listenAddress`	no	`string`	The host and port on which to listen for data points. The listening server accepts data points on the same HTTP path as the ingest endpoint or gateway. For example, `/v2/datapoint` or `/v1/trace`. Requests to other paths return errors with HTTP code 404. The default value is `127.0.0.1:9080`.
`serverTimeout`	no	`int64`	HTTP timeout duration for both read and write operations. Accepts a duration string for https://golang.org/pkg/time/#ParseDuration. The default value is `5s`.
`sendInternalMetrics`	no	`bool`	Whether to emit internal metrics about the HTTP listener. The default value is `false`.

Metrics

There are no metrics available for this integration.

Troubleshooting

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal.
Contact Splunk Support.

Available to prospective customers and free trial users

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers.
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups.

Documentation