OpenTelemetry Metrics Exporter - OTLP

Status: Mixed

General

Status: Stable

OTLP Metrics Exporter is a Push Metric Exporter which sends metrics via the OpenTelemetry Protocol.

OTLP Metrics Exporter MUST support both Cumulative and Delta Aggregation Temporality.

The exporter MUST provide configuration according to the OpenTelemetry Protocol Exporter specification.

If a language provides a mechanism to automatically configure a MetricReader to pair with the associated Exporter (e.g., using the OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER environment variable), then by default:

  • The exporter MUST be paired with a periodic exporting MetricReader.
  • The exporter MUST configure the default aggregation temporality on the basis of instrument kind using the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_TEMPORALITY_PREFERENCE variable as described below.
  • The exporter MUST configure the default aggregation on the basis of instrument kind using the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_DEFAULT_HISTOGRAM_AGGREGATION variable as described below if it is implemented.

Additional Configuration

Status: Mixed

NameStatusDescriptionDefault
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_TEMPORALITY_PREFERENCEStableThe aggregation temporality to use on the basis of instrument kind.cumulative
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_DEFAULT_HISTOGRAM_AGGREGATIONExperimentalThe default aggregation to use for histogram instruments.explicit_bucket_histogram

The recognized (case-insensitive) values for OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_TEMPORALITY_PREFERENCE are:

  • cumulative: Choose cumulative aggregation temporality for all instrument kinds.
  • delta: Choose Delta aggregation temporality for Counter, Asynchronous Counter and Histogram instrument kinds, choose Cumulative aggregation for UpDownCounter and Asynchronous UpDownCounter instrument kinds.

The recognized (case-insensitive) values for OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_DEFAULT_HISTOGRAM_AGGREGATION are: