Docs » Available host and application monitors » Configure application receivers for hosts and servers » Host metadata properties

Host metadata properties 🔗

Description 🔗

Note: This monitor is deprecated in favor of the host-metrics-receiver monitor. Switch to that receiver as the Smart Agent is deprecated. To learn more, see Host metrics receiver.

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector provides this integration as the host-metadata monitor for the Smart Agent Receiver.

Use this integration to collect metadata properties about a host.

This integration is required for some views in Splunk Observability Cloud to operate. This monitor accepts endpoints. This monitor does not allow multiple instances.

In containerized environments, host /etc and /proc might not be located directly under the root path. You can specify the path to proc and etc using the top level agent configurations procPath and etcPath, as shown in the following example:

procPath: /proc
etcPath: /etc
monitors:
  - type: host-metadata

Metadata updates occur on a sparse interval of approximately 1m, 1m, 1h, and 1d, and continue repeating once per day. Setting the Interval configuration for this monitor does not affect the sparse interval on which metadata is collected.

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 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 Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring navigators.

  • Access the Metric Finder and search for metrics sent by the monitor. For information, see Use the Metric Finder.

Installation 🔗

Follow these steps to deploy this integration:

  1. Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:

  2. Configure the monitor, as described in the Configuration section.

  3. Restart the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector.

Configuration 🔗

To use this Smart Agent monitor with the Collector, include the smartagent receiver and service pipeline in your configuration file. The Smart Agent receiver is fully supported only on x86_64/amd64 platforms.

See the examples below for more details.

Configuration example 🔗

To activate this monitor in the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector, add the following to your agent configuration:

receivers:
  smartagent/host-metadata:
    type: host-metadata
    ... # Additional config

To complete the monitor activation, you must also include the smartagent/host-metadata receiver item in a metrics pipeline. To do this, add the receiver item to the service/pipelines/metrics/receivers section of your configuration file. For example:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [smartagent/host-metadata]

See configuration examples for specific use cases that show how the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector can integrate and complement existing environments.

Metrics 🔗

The following metrics are available for this integration:

Non-default metrics (version 4.7.0+) 🔗

To emit metrics that are not default, you can add those metrics in the generic monitor-level extraMetrics configuration option. Metrics derived from specific configuration options that do not appear in the above list of metrics do not need to be added to extraMetrics.

To see a list of metrics that will be emitted, you can run agent-status monitors after configuring this monitor in a running agent instance.

Get help 🔗

If you are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, try these tips:

To learn about even more support options, see Splunk Customer Success.