Kafka producer

Use this Splunk Observability Cloud integration for the Collectd Java-based Kafka producer monitor. See benefits, install, configuration, and metrics

The Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector uses the Smart Agent receiver with the collectd/kafka_producer monitor type to monitor a Java-based Kafka producer.

Note: To monitor Kafka with the OpenTelemetry Collector using native OpenTelemetry components refer to the Kafka metrics receiver component.

This integration has a set of built-in MBeans to pull metrics from the Kafka producer’s JMX endpoint. For more information, see Kafka producer MBeans in GitHub.

This integration is only available on Kubernetes and Linux, and requires Kafka version 0.9.0.0 or higher.

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/collectd/kafka_producer:
    type: collectd/kafka_producer
    ... # Additional config

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

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/ collectd/kafka_producer]

Configuration settings

The following table shows the configuration options for collectd/kafka_producer:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`host`	yes	`string`	Host to connect to. JMX must be configured for remote access and be accessible from the agent.
`port`	yes	`integer`	JMX connection port on the application. Not the RMI port. This correponds to the `com.sun.management.jmxremote.port` Java property set on the JVM when running the application.
`name`	no	`string`
`serviceName`	no	`string`	How the service type is identified in Splunk Observability Cloud so that you can get built-in content for it. For custom JMX integrations, set it to an arbitrary value.
`serviceURL`	no	`string`	The JMX connection string. Rendered as a Go template. Has access to the other values in this configuration. Under normal circumstances, don’t set this string directly and use the host and port settings instead. The default value is `service:jmx:rmi:///jndi/rmi://{{.Host}}:{{.Port}}/jmxrmi`.
`instancePrefix`	no	`string`	Prefixes the generated plugin instance with a prefix. If a second `instancePrefix` is specified in a referenced MBean block, the prefix specified in the Connection block appears at the beginning of the plugin instance, and the prefix specified in the MBean block is appended to it.
`username`	no	`string`	Username to authenticate to the server.
`password`	no	`string`	User password to authenticate to the server.
`customDimensions`	no	`map of strings`	Takes in key-values pairs of custom dimensions at the connection level.
`mBeansToCollect`	no	`list of strings`	A list of the MBeans to be collected, as defined in `mBeanDefinitions`. If not provided, all defined MBeans are collected.
`mBeansToOmit`	no	`list of strings`	A list of the MBeans to omit. This can be useful when only a few MBeans need to omitted from the default list.
`mBeanDefinitions`	no	`map of objects (see below)`	Specifies how to map JMX MBean values to metrics. Specific service monitors such as Cassandra, Kafka, or Activemq, are configured with a set of mappings: additional mappings are merged with those. To learn more, see the Collectd documentation .
`nodeType`	yes	`string`	Hadoop nodeType.

The nested mBeanDefinitions configuration object has the following fields:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`objectName`	no	`string`	Sets the pattern used to retrieve MBeans from the MBeanServer. If more than one MBean is returned, use the `instanceFrom` option to make the identifiers unique.
`instancePrefix`	no	`string`	Prefixes the generated plugin instance with a prefix.
`instanceFrom`	no	`list of strings`	The object names used by JMX to identify MBeans include properties, which are in the form of key-value-pairs. If the given object name is not unique and multiple MBeans are returned, the values of those properties might differ. Use this option to build the plugin instance from the appropriate property values. To generate the plugin instance from multiple property values, use multiple instances of this setting.
`values`	no	`list of objects (see below)`	The `value` blocks map one or more attributes of an MBean to a value list in collectd. There must be at least one `value` block within each MBean block.
`dimensions`	no	`list of strings`	A list of strings for the dimensions.

The nested values config object has the following fields:


Option	Required	Type	Description
`type`	no	`string`	Sets the dataset used within collectd to handle the values of the MBean attribute.
`table`	no	`bool`	Whether the returned attribute is a composite type. If set to `true`, the keys within the composite type are appended to the type instance. The default value is `false`.
`instancePrefix`	no	`string`	Similar to the `instancePrefix` option under the MBean block, but sets the type instance instead.
`instanceFrom`	no	`list of strings`	Similar to the `instancePrefix` option under the MBean block, but sets the type instance instead.
`attribute`	no	`string`	The name of the attribute from which the value is read. You can access the keys of composite types by using a dot to concatenate the key name to the attribute name. For example, `attrib0.key42`. If `table` is set to `true`, the path must point to a composite type, otherwise it must point to a numeric type.
`attributes`	no	`list of strings`	The plural form of the `attribute` setting. Used to derive multiple metrics from a single MBean.

Metrics

The following metrics are available for this integration:

https://raw.githubusercontent.com/signalfx/splunk-otel-collector/main/internal/signalfx-agent/pkg/monitors/collectd/kafkaproducer/metadata.yaml

Notes

To learn more about the available in Splunk Observability Cloud see Metric types.
In host-based subscription plans, default metrics are those metrics included in host-based subscriptions in Splunk Observability Cloud, such as host, container, or bundled metrics. Custom metrics are not provided by default and might be subject to charges. See Metric categories for more information.
In MTS-based subscription plans, all metrics are custom.
To add additional metrics, see how to configure extraMetrics in Add additional metrics.

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