How to Export Metrics to an OTLP Endpoint

Problem

You want to analyze your orbtymon monitoring data alongside other telemetry data in your existing observability platform (like Grafana, New Relic, or Honeycomb). You need a standardized way to export these metrics without building a custom integration.

Solution

orbtymon can export monitoring metrics to any OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol) compatible endpoint. By adding a simple configuration to your orbtymon.yaml file, you can have metrics from every check sent directly to your monitoring stack.

Prerequisites

An observability platform that supports OTLP metric ingestion over HTTP.
An orbtymon.yaml file to configure your monitors.
The orbtymon CLI to apply your configuration.

Step-by-step guide

1. Locate your OTLP endpoint URL and headers

First, you need to find the specific URL and any required authentication headers from your observability platform. This is usually found in the documentation under “OTLP,” “OpenTelemetry,” or “Metrics Export.”

Endpoint URL: Look for an HTTP endpoint for OTLP metrics. It will typically end in /v1/metrics. For example: https://otlp.your-provider.com/v1/metrics.
Headers: You will likely need an authentication header, such as Authorization: Bearer YOUR_API_KEY or X-API-Key: YOUR_API_KEY.

2. Configure your `orbtymon.yaml` file

Open your orbtymon.yaml file and add the openTelemetry block at the top level.

# yaml-language-server: $schema=https://www.orbtymon.app/schema.json

openTelemetry:
  endpoint: <YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT_URL>
  headers:
    Authorization: Bearer <YOUR_TOKEN>
    # Add any other required headers here

# Your monitors are defined below
my-first-monitor:
  # ...

Replace <YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT_URL> and <YOUR_TOKEN> with the values you found in step 1.

Note: Currently, we only support OTLP over HTTP.

3. Apply the configuration

Use the orbtymon CLI to apply the changes to your account.

orbtymon apply

After applying the configuration, orbtymon will send metrics to your specified endpoint after every check is completed.

4. Verify in your observability platform

Go to your observability platform and look for the new metrics coming from orbtymon. You should be able to build dashboards and alerts based on this data.

Here are some examples of what it can look like: