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OpenTelemetry Collector — Advanced Configuration

28. 05. 2025 Updated: 24. 03. 2026 1 min read intermediate

DevOps Expert

OpenTelemetry Collector — Advanced Configuration

OpenTelemetryCollectorObservabilitySampling 5 min read

Advanced OTel Collector deployment. Tail sampling, processors, connectors and deployment patterns.

Deployment Patterns

  • Agent — DaemonSet on every node
  • Gateway — centralized Collector
  • Agent + Gateway (recommended) — agent filters, gateway exports

Tail Sampling

processors:
  tail_sampling:
    decision_wait: 10s
    num_traces: 100000
    policies:
      - name: errors
        type: status_code
        status_code: {status_codes: [ERROR]}
      - name: slow-traces
        type: latency
        latency: {threshold_ms: 2000}
      - name: probabilistic
        type: probabilistic
        probabilistic: {sampling_percentage: 10}

Useful Processors

processors:
  attributes:
    actions:
      - key: environment
        value: production
        action: upsert
  filter:
    traces:
      span:
        - 'attributes["http.target"] == "/healthz"'
  transform:
    trace_statements:
      - context: span
        statements:
          - truncate_all(attributes, 256)
  resourcedetection:
    detectors: [env, system, docker, gcp, aws, azure]

Summary

The OTel Collector with tail sampling and advanced processors enables intelligent telemetry filtering. The Agent + Gateway pattern scales to thousands of services.

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We build core systems and AI agents that keep operations running. 15 years of experience with enterprise IT.