AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry Collector (ADOT Collector) is an AWS supported version of the upstream OpenTelemetry Collector and is distributed by Amazon. It supports the selected components from the OpenTelemetry community. It is fully compatible with AWS computing platforms including EC2, ECS, and EKS. It enables customers to send telemetry data to AWS CloudWatch Metrics, Traces, and Logs backends as well as the other supported backends.

Download the RPM Package

1. Login on Amazon Linux 2 EC2 host and install ADOT Collector RPM package (stable version):

rpm -Uvh https://aws-otel-collector.s3.amazonaws.com/amazon_linux/amd64/latest/aws-otel-collector.rpm

2. (Optional) Download the package and verify the integrity before install

wget https://aws-otel-collector.s3.amazonaws.com/amazon_linux/amd64/latest/aws-otel-collector.rpm
wget https://aws-otel-collector.s3.amazonaws.com/aws-otel-collector.gpg
sudo rpm --import aws-otel-collector.gpg
rpm --checksig aws-otel-collector.rpm

If the package is verified correctly, you'll see output similar to:

aws-otel-collector.rpm: digests signatures OK

However, if you see output like:

aws-otel-collector.rpm: digests SIGNATURES NOT OK

You should stop, and try download the rpm package from the official source again.

Setup the service

Now, let's create the YAML file to setup the ADOT Collector before start the Linux service daemon.

vim  /opt/aws/aws-otel-collector/etc/config.yaml

extensions:
  health_check:
receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318
exporters:
  awsxray:
  awsemf:
processors:
  batch/traces:
    timeout: 1s
    send_batch_size: 50
  batch/metrics:
    timeout: 60s
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [awsxray]
    metrics:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [awsemf]

After creating the config file, now let's setup the OTEL as Linux service.

$ systemctl enable aws-otel-collector
Created symlink from /etc/systemd/system/multi-user.target.wants/aws-otel-collector.service to /etc/systemd/system/aws-otel-collector.service.
$ systemctl start aws-otel-collector
$ systemctl status aws-otel-collector
 aws-otel-collector.service - ADOT Collector
   Loaded: loaded (/etc/systemd/system/aws-otel-collector.service; enabled; vendor preset: disabled)
   Active: **active** (running) since Fri 2024-09-13 19:21:50 UTC; 5s ago
 Main PID: 15987 (aws-otel-collec)
   CGroup: /system.slice/aws-otel-collector.service
           └─15987 /opt/aws/aws-otel-collector/bin/aws-otel-collector --config /opt/aws/aws-otel-collector/etc/config.yaml

Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.174Z        info        service@v0.102.1/telemetry.go:96        Servi...ormal"}
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.180Z        warn        awsemfexporter@v0.102.0/emf_exporter.go:75        th...
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.181Z        info        service@v0.102.1/service.go:180        Starti...PU": 1}
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.181Z        info        extensions/extensions.go:34        Starting e...ions...
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.181Z        warn        internal@v0.102.1/warning.go:42        Using the 0.0...
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.182Z        info        otlpreceiver@v0.102.1/otlp.go:102        Star...:4317"}
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.183Z        warn        internal@v0.102.1/warning.go:42        Using the 0.0...
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.184Z        info        otlpreceiver@v0.102.1/otlp.go:152        Star...:4318"}
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.184Z        info        service@v0.102.1/service.go:206        Everyt...g data.
Sep 13 19:21:50 ip-172-31-17-169.us-west-2.compute.internal aws-otel-collector[15987]: 2024-09-13T19:21:50.184Z        warn        localhostgate/featuregate.go:63        The default e...
Hint: Some lines were ellipsized, use -l to show in full.

You should see active/running status in the log.

As a industry standard, applications using OpenTelemetry will forward data to OTEL receivers thought HTTP or gRPC. For additional details about AWS OTEL, use the official doc as reference: https://aws-otel.github.io/