Session 2 — OpenTelemetry Fundamentals

Session Overview

Duration: 2 hours
Format: Instructor presentation + hands-on exercises
Level: Intermediate

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Session Agenda

Time	Topic	Format
0:00 – 0:30	OpenTelemetry history, goals, and CNCF status	Presentation
0:30 – 1:00	OTel Collector: components, configuration	Presentation + Demo
1:00 – 1:30	Deployment models: Agent vs Gateway	Presentation + Architecture
1:30 – 2:00	Hands-on: configure and run a collector	Lab exercise

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Learning Objectives

By the end of Session 2, you will be able to:

• Describe OpenTelemetry's role in the CNCF ecosystem
• Explain the OTel Collector pipeline: receivers → processors → exporters
• Read and write a basic OTel collector YAML configuration
• Choose between Agent Mode and Gateway Mode for a given deployment scenario
• Connect an OTel collector to xScaler

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Session Pages

1. OTel Overview — CNCF, signals, SDK, protocol
2. Collector Components — receivers, processors, exporters, pipelines
3. Deployment Models — single node, DaemonSet, Deployment
4. Agent vs Gateway — mode comparison, selection guide

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Key Concepts Introduced

Concept	Description
OTLP	OpenTelemetry Line Protocol — the wire format for all three signals
Receiver	Ingest endpoint for a collector (OTLP, Prometheus, Filelog, etc.)
Processor	Transforms data in-pipeline (batch, memory_limiter, attributes, etc.)
Exporter	Sends data to a backend (prometheusremotewrite, otlphttp, etc.)
Pipeline	Connects receivers → processors → exporters for one signal type
Agent Mode	One collector per host, co-located with applications
Gateway Mode	Centralised collector receiving from many sources

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Instructor Notes

Trainer Guidance

• Show the actual OTel collector config from `` in the repository
• Run docker compose logs otel-collector to show live scraping activity
• Use the Grafana Explore view to show data flowing from OTel Collector into platform-metrics

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