OTLP
OTLP, the OpenTelemetry Protocol, is a vendor-neutral protocol that defines how OpenTelemetry telemetry data is encoded and transmitted between sources, collectors, and destinations.
Logs and Telemetry
The OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) is a vendor-neutral protocol for transmitting telemetry data between instrumentation, collectors, and backends.
- How it is used
- Standardizes transmission of logs, metrics, and traces between applications, Fluent Bit collectors, and downstream observability services.
- How deep it goes
- Explains transports, compatibility limits, input listeners, and output URI and label configuration without implementing application-side APIs.
- Examples
- Configures Fluent Bit listeners for logs, traces, and metrics, then exports signals through separate HTTP URIs with labels.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure OTLP ingestion and export in Fluent Bit while selecting a transport compatible with receiving services.
Cloud Observability in Action
The OpenTelemetry Protocol is a telemetry data-delivery protocol defining signal encoding, transport, and delivery between sources, collectors, and destinations.
- How it is used
- Carries telemetry between instrumented sources, OpenTelemetry Collectors, intermediate nodes, and backend destinations.
- How deep it goes
- Defines encoding, transport, delivery, request–response behavior, reliability, load balancing, and backpressure without detailing signal schemas.
- Examples
- Uses Docker Compose, a collector OTLP receiver, batching pipelines, Prometheus metrics export, and Jaeger trace export.
- What you can do after
- Operate/configure telemetry delivery through collectors using OTLP endpoints, transports, receivers, pipelines, and exporters.
Related concepts
- OpenTelemetrypart of · OpenTelemetry is an open, vendor-neutral observability standard and framework for instrumenting software and generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry such as traces, metrics, and logs.
- JSONcontrasts with · JSON is a standardized, language-independent text format for representing structured data using objects, arrays, strings, numbers, Boolean values, and null.
- API gatewayused by · An API gateway is an intermediary that provides an entry point for client requests to backend APIs or services and routes or otherwise mediates those requests.
- FluentBitused by · Fluent Bit is a lightweight, open-source telemetry agent for collecting, processing, enriching, and forwarding logs and other event data.
- telemetryconfigures · Telemetry is automatically generated or collected operational data describing a system’s activity, state, behavior, or performance.
- gRPCuses · gRPC is an open-source remote procedure call framework for defining services and invoking them across process or network boundaries, commonly using Protocol Buffers and HTTP/2.
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