Overview

The F5 NGINX Agent v3 now includes an embedded OpenTelemetry (OTel) Collector, streamlining observability and metric collection for NGINX instances. With this feature, you can collect:

• Metrics from NGINX Plus and NGINX OSS
• Host metrics (CPU, memory, disk, and network activity) from VMs or Containers

This guide walks you through enabling and configuring the embedded OpenTelemetry Collector for metric export.

Key Benefits

• Seamless Integration: No need to deploy an external OpenTelemetry Collector. All components are embedded within the Agent for streamlined observability.
• Standardized Protocol: Support for OpenTelemetry standards ensures interoperability with a wide range of observability backends, including Jaeger, Prometheus, Splunk, and more.

Configuration

How to send data to an OTel Collector - VM

Before you begin

• NGINX One Console Getting Started
• NGINX OSS installed on a Virtual Machine
• NGINX Agent v3 is installed

Setting Up the OTel Collector to Export Metrics to NGINX One Console

1. Enable NGINX Stub Status API to collect NGINX metrics in NGINX OSS. A sample Stub Status API configuration is shown below:

   vim

   Copy

   server {
       listen 127.0.0.1:8080;
       location /api {
           stub_status;
           allow 127.0.0.1;
           deny all;
       }
   }

   server {
       listen 127.0.0.1:8080;
       location /api {
           stub_status;
           allow 127.0.0.1;
           deny all;
       }
   }

2. Edit the /etc/nginx-agent/nginx-agent.conf and add the following.

   Make sure to replace your-data-plane-key-here with the real data plane key that you are using for your application or service.

   vim

   Copy

   collector:
   receivers:
       host_metrics:
       collection_interval: 1m0s
       initial_delay: 1s
       scrapers:
           cpu: {}
           memory: {}
           disk: {}
           network: {}
           filesystem: {}
   processors:
       batch: {}
   exporters:
       otlp_exporters:
       - server:
           host: <saas-host>
           port: 443
           authenticator: headers_setter
           tls:
           skip_verify: false
   extensions:
       headers_setter:
       headers:
           - action: insert
           key: "authorization"
           value: "your-data-plane-key-here"

   collector:
   receivers:
       host_metrics:
       collection_interval: 1m0s
       initial_delay: 1s
       scrapers:
           cpu: {}
           memory: {}
           disk: {}
           network: {}
           filesystem: {}
   processors:
       batch: {}
   exporters:
       otlp_exporters:
       - server:
           host: <saas-host>
           port: 443
           authenticator: headers_setter
           tls:
           skip_verify: false
   extensions:
       headers_setter:
       headers:
           - action: insert
           key: "authorization"
           value: "your-data-plane-key-here"

3. Restart the NGINX Agent service

   Copy

       sudo systemctl restart nginx-agent

       sudo systemctl restart nginx-agent

Troubleshooting

1. Verify the OTel Collector is up and running

   Copy

   curl http://127.0.0.1:1337 | jq

   curl http://127.0.0.1:1337 | jq

The response should look like:

{
    "status": "Server available",
    "upSince": "2025-02-19T17:51:25.195637946Z",
    "uptime": "5.601839172s"
}

{
    "status": "Server available",
    "upSince": "2025-02-19T17:51:25.195637946Z",
    "uptime": "5.601839172s"
}

2. Check the OpenTelemetry collector agent log

sudo tail -n 100 /var/log/nginx-agent/opentelemetry-collector-agent.log

sudo tail -n 100 /var/log/nginx-agent/opentelemetry-collector-agent.log

3. Change the log level to debug