Configuration

All user-provided configuration is in the observe-agent.yaml file. The agent will process this file when it starts and produce a final otel-collector configuration. The default configuration fragments for otel-collector are organized by connection type in the connections folder.

Enable or Disable Connections

These configuration fragments are tied to a specific feature that can be enabled or disabled. For example, in the host_monitoring connection type we have the fragments logs.yaml and metrics.yaml. Each of these is tied to a boolean field in the observe-agent.yaml file and will be included or omitted based on the value there.

Note

Since there’s no guarantee that any given feature will be enabled or disabled, these fragments must be independent of each other and cannot reference anything defined in other fragments. Referencing configuration between fragments could produce a broken otel-collector configuration.

Adding custom OTEL Collector Configuration

The top level observe-agent.yaml includes a section for providing additional OTEL collector configuration, otel_config_overrides. For example, to add a new exporter and a new pipeline to use it, you could define both in this section as follows:

otel_config_overrides:
  exporters:
    debug:
      verbosity: detailed
      sampling_initial: 5
      sampling_thereafter: 200
  service:
    pipelines:
      metrics/debug:
        receivers: [hostmetrics/host-monitoring]
        processors: [memory_limiter]
        exporters: [debug]

When the agent starts, it adds this section to the otel-collector configuration and loads it.

Overriding existing OTEL Collector Configuration

You can also override existing components that are defined in the default fragments. To do so, find the name of the component you want to override and redefine it in the otel_config_overrides section of observe-agent.yaml. This section will override any prior definitions of components with the same name.

otel_config_overrides:
  exporters:
    debug:
      verbosity: detailed
      sampling_initial: 5
      sampling_thereafter: 200
  service:
    pipelines:
      # This will override the existing metrics/host_monitoring pipeline and output to stdout debug instead
      metrics/host_monitoring:
        receivers: [hostmetrics/host-monitoring]
        processors: [memory_limiter]
        exporters: [debug]

observe-agent.yaml Schema

Field	Default	Description
token		Observe authentication token
observe_url		Observe data collection endpoint
debug	false	Set log level of agent to “DEBUG”
host_monitoring		Specifies options for the Host Monitoring Connection
host_monitoring.enabled	true	Enables Host Monitoring Connection
host_monitoring.logs		Specifies options for the logs component within Host Monitoring
host_monitoring.logs.enabled	true	Enables the logs component within Host Monitoring
host_monitoring.metrics		Specifies options for the metrics component within Host Monitoring
host_monitoring.metrics.enabled	true	Enables the metrics component within Host Monitoring
otel_config_overrides		Defines overrides to be added to the OTEL Collector configuration