Exporter

As explained in Cloud Observability in Action

An exporter is a software component that exposes telemetry from an external system in a format that a monitoring system can collect.

An exporter exposes telemetry from an external system in a format that a monitoring system can collect. In a Prometheus setup, an exporter makes metrics from systems such as Kafka or an IoT device available for scraping. In an OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline, an exporter sends processed signals to a backend. section 3.5.2 section 4.3.2

Exporters solve two closely related integration problems:

• Bridge systems you do not own into a monitoring workflow, such as exposing message-queue or IoT metrics for Prometheus to scrape. section 3.5.2
• Deliver signals from an OpenTelemetry Collector to destinations such as Prometheus or Jaeger after receivers and processors have handled them. section 4.3.2
• Adapt incompatible signal paths when necessary; for example, a proxy can turn log-file output into stdout for cloud-native use. section 3.5.2

A collector exporting metrics and traces

A Collector can scrape ho11y metrics with a Prometheus receiver, batch them, and export them through a Prometheus exporter at 0.0.0.0:9292. A separate traces pipeline can receive OTLP data, batch it, and export it to Jaeger at jaeger:14250. Prometheus then scrapes the Collector’s exposed endpoint, while Jaeger receives the traces.

Figure 4.6 The OpenTelemetry collector and its components

Use the component diagram to trace how receivers, processors, and exporters form an OpenTelemetry Collector pipeline. section 4.3.2

How Cloud Observability in Action covers it

How deep it goes

Defines exporter roles and shows receiver-to-processor-to-exporter configuration, but does not detail exporter implementation internals.

Examples

Uses Kafka, IoT devices, ho11y metrics, Prometheus scraping, Jaeger traces, and a log-file-to-stdout adapter.

What it assumes

Assumes familiarity with telemetry signals and collection, while introducing the receiver, processor, exporter, and backend flow.

What you can do after

Operate/configure exporters that expose external metrics or deliver Collector signals to Prometheus and Jaeger.

How it connects

Connects exporters with Prometheus, OpenTelemetry Collector, receivers, processors, OTLP, metrics, traces, and Jaeger.

liveBookmanning.com

Read Cloud Observability in Action on liveBook Get the book at manning.com

Related concepts

• pipelineused by · A pipeline is an ordered or coordinated sequence of connected processing stages or tasks that passes data, work, or results toward an outcome.
• Prometheususes · Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting system that collects, stores, and queries time-series metrics.
• OpenTelemetry Collectorhas part · The OpenTelemetry Collector is a vendor-neutral service that receives, processes, and exports telemetry data.

This explainer was generated by Manning's knowledge graph from the text of Cloud Observability in Action. The section links point to the parts of the book it draws on.