Host metrics receiver 🔗

The host metrics receiver generates metrics scraped from host systems when the Collector is deployed as an agent. The supported pipeline type is metrics.

By default, the host metrics receiver is activated in the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector and collects the following metrics:

CPU usage metrics
Disk I/O metrics
CPU load metrics
File system usage metrics
Memory usage metrics
Network interface and TCP connection metrics
Process count metrics (Linux only)
Per process CPU, memory, and disk I/O metrics

Host receiver metrics appear in Infrastructure Monitoring. You can use them to create dashboards and alerts. See Create detectors to trigger alerts for more information.

Caution

The SignalFx exporter excludes some available metrics by default. Learn more about default metric filters in List of metrics excluded by default. The most up-to-date list of excluded metrics is in GitHub. See https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/exporter/signalfxexporter/internal/translation/default_metrics.go#L49.

Get started 🔗

Follow these steps to configure and activate the component:

Deploy the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector to your host or container platform:
Configure the receiver as described in the next section.
Restart the Collector.

Note

Metrics produced by this receiver count towards the custom metric ingestion limit. See System limits for Splunk Infrastructure Monitoring.

Collect container host metrics (Linux) 🔗

The host metrics receiver collects metrics from the Linux system directories. To collect metrics for the host instead of the container, follow these steps:

Mount the entire host file system when running the container. For example: docker run -v /:/hostfs. You can also choose which parts of the host file system to mount. For example: docker run -v /proc:/hostfs/proc
Configure root_path so that the host metrics receiver knows where the root file system is located. For example:
```
receivers:
hostmetrics:
   root_path: /hostfs
```
If you are running multiple instances of the host metrics receiver, set the same root_path for all.

Sample configurations 🔗

The collection interval and the categories of metrics to be scraped can be configured as shown in the following example:

hostmetrics:
  collection_interval: <duration> # The default is 1m.
  scrapers:
    <scraper1>:
    <scraper2>:
    ...

Scrapers extract data from endpoints and then send that data to a specified target. The following table shows the available scrapers:

Scraper	Description
`cpu`	CPU utilization metrics
`disk`	Disk I/O metrics
`load`	CPU load metrics
`filesystem`	File system utilization metrics
`memory`	Memory utilization metrics
`network`	Network interface I/O metrics and TCP connection metrics
`paging`	Paging or swap space utilization and I/O metrics
`processes`	Process count metrics. Only available on Linux
`process`	Per process CPU, memory, and disk I/O metrics

See the following sections for scraper configurations.

Disk 🔗

disk:
  <include|exclude>:
    devices: [ <device name>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>

File system 🔗

filesystem:
  <include_devices|exclude_devices>:
    devices: [ <device name>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>
  <include_fs_types|exclude_fs_types>:
    fs_types: [ <filesystem type>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>
  <include_mount_points|exclude_mount_points>:
    mount_points: [ <mount point>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>

The following example shows the forward slash (/) as a common mount point for Linux systems:

filesystem:
  include_mount_points:
    mount_points: ["/"]
    match_type: strict

Similarly, the following example shows C: as a common mount point for Windows systems:

filesystem:
  include_mount_points:
    mount_points: ["C:"]
    match_type: strict

To include virtual file systems, set include_virtual_filesystems to true.

filesystem:
  include_virtual_filesystems: true

Find more examples in the daemonset.yaml file in GitHub.

Network 🔗

network:
  <include|exclude>:
    interfaces: [ <interface name>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>

Process 🔗

process:
  <include|exclude>:
    names: [ <process name>, ... ]
    match_type: <strict|regexp>
  mute_process_name_error: <true|false>
  mute_process_exe_error: <true|false>
  mute_process_io_error: <true|false>
  scrape_process_delay: <time>

If you keep getting errors related to process reading, consider setting mute_process_name_error, mute_process_exe_error, or mute_process_io_error to true.

Filtering 🔗

To only gather a subset of metrics from a particular source, use the host metrics receiver with the filter processor.

Different frequencies 🔗

To scrape some metrics at a different frequency than others, configure multiple host metrics receivers with different collection_interval values. For example:

receivers:
  hostmetrics:
    collection_interval: 30s
    scrapers:
      cpu:
      memory:

  hostmetrics/disk:
    collection_interval: 1m
    scrapers:
      disk:
      filesystem:

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [hostmetrics, hostmetrics/disk]

Metrics 🔗

The following metrics, resource attributes, and attributes are available.

Note

The SignalFx exporter excludes some available metrics by default. Learn more about default metric filters in List of metrics excluded by default.

cpu scraper 🔗

For more information, see the cpu scraper documentation in GitHub.

disk scraper 🔗

For more information, see the disk scraper documentation in GitHub.

filesystem scraper 🔗

For more information, see the filesystem scraper documentation in GitHub.

load scraper 🔗

For more information, see the load scraper documentation in GitHub.

memory scraper 🔗

For more information, see the memory scraper documentation in GitHub.

network scraper 🔗

For more information, see the network scraper documentation in GitHub.

paging scraper 🔗

For more information, see the paging scraper documentation in GitHub.

process scraper 🔗

For more information, see the process scraper documentation in GitHub.

processes scraper 🔗

For more information, see the processes scraper documentation in GitHub.

Default translation rules and generated metrics 🔗

The SignalFx exporter uses the translation rules defined in translation/constants.go by default.

The default rules create metrics which are reported directly to Infrastructure Monitoring. If you want to change any of their attributes or values, you need to either modify the translation rules or their constituent host metrics.

By default, the SignalFx exporter creates the following aggregated metrics from the Host metrics receiver:

cpu.idle
cpu.interrupt
cpu.nice
cpu.num_processors
cpu.softirq
cpu.steal
cpu.system
cpu.user
cpu.utilization
cpu.utilization_per_core
cpu.wait
disk.summary_utilization
disk.utilization
disk_ops.pending
disk_ops.total
memory.total
memory.utilization
network.total
process.cpu_time_seconds
system.disk.io.total
system.disk.operations.total
system.network.io.total
system.network.packets.total
vmpage_io.memory.in
vmpage_io.memory.out
vmpage_io.swap.in
vmpage_io.swap.out

In addition to the aggregated metrics, the default rules make available the following “per core” custom hostmetrics. The CPU number is assigned to the dimension cpu:

cpu.interrupt
cpu.nice
cpu.softirq
cpu.steal
cpu.system
cpu.user
cpu.wait

Resource attributes 🔗

The host metrics receiver doesn’t set any resource attributes on the exported metrics.

To set resource attributes, provide them using the OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES environment variables. For example:

export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES="service.name=<name_of_service>,service.version=<version_of_service>"

Activate or deactivate specific metrics 🔗

You can activate or deactivate specific metrics by setting the enabled field in the metrics section for each metric. For example:

receivers:
  samplereceiver:
    metrics:
      metric-one:
        enabled: true
      metric-two:
        enabled: false

The following is an example of host metrics receiver configuration with activated metrics:

receivers:
  hostmetrics:
    scrapers:
      process:
        metrics:
          process.cpu.utilization:
            enabled: true

Note

Deactivated metrics aren’t sent to Splunk Observability Cloud.

Settings 🔗

The following table shows the configuration options for the host metrics receiver:

Troubleshooting 🔗

If you are a Splunk Observability Cloud customer and are not able to see your data in Splunk Observability Cloud, you can get help in the following ways.

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers 🔗

Submit a case in the Splunk Support Portal .
Call Splunk Customer Support .

Available to prospective customers and free trial users 🔗

Ask a question and get answers through community support at Splunk Answers .
Join the Splunk #observability user group Slack channel to communicate with customers, partners, and Splunk employees worldwide. To join, see Chat groups in the Get Started with Splunk Community manual.

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

Related Topics

Host metrics receiver 🔗

Get started 🔗

Collect container host metrics (Linux) 🔗

Sample configurations 🔗

Disk 🔗

File system 🔗

Network 🔗

Process 🔗

Filtering 🔗

Different frequencies 🔗

Metrics 🔗

cpu scraper 🔗

disk scraper 🔗

filesystem scraper 🔗

load scraper 🔗

memory scraper 🔗

network scraper 🔗

paging scraper 🔗

process scraper 🔗

processes scraper 🔗

Default translation rules and generated metrics 🔗

Resource attributes 🔗

Activate or deactivate specific metrics 🔗

Settings 🔗

Troubleshooting 🔗

Available to Splunk Observability Cloud customers 🔗

Available to prospective customers and free trial users 🔗

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