common-mistakes.md

Common OpenTelemetry setup mistakes

This document lists the most common mistakes when setting up an OpenTelemetry pipeline to send data to Datadog.

1. Using the incorrect OpenTelemetry distro

The Datadog exporter is not present in all OpenTelemetry distros, for example, the core OpenTelemetry distro does not include vendor-specific exporters. It is common for people to confuse in which distro our exporter is present.

For example, people may try to use the otel/opentelemetry-collector Docker image instead of the otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib image. This will make the Collector fail to start.

2. Forgetting to include defined components in the pipeline

The OpenTelemetry Collector does not error out if a component is defined but not used in any pipeline. In the following configuration, the OTLP receiver is configured but not used in any pipeline:

receivers:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        grpc:
    statsd:

exporters:
  datadog:
    api:
      key: ${DD_API_KEY}

service:
  pipelines:
    metrics:
      receivers: [statsd] # MISSING otlp
      exporters: [datadog]

If the component is not added to the pipeline, it won't work.