OTLP Receiver Probe¶

The otlp_receiver probe turns the agent into an edge OTLP collector: applications and SDKs push OTLP metrics to it (gRPC or HTTP), and the ingested datapoints flow through the agent exactly like locally collected metrics — out to PRTG, Nagios, Prometheus, OTLP or the SenHub cloud, whichever storages are configured.

Use it when instrumented applications run next to the agent and you want one egress point per host instead of a separate collector deployment.

Quick start¶

probes:
  - name: otlp-in
    type: otlp_receiver
    params:
      protocol: grpc          # listens on 127.0.0.1:4317
      # address: "0.0.0.0:4317"  # required to accept remote senders

Point any OTel SDK or collector at the agent:

export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4317
export OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc

Parameters¶

Parameter	Default	Description
`protocol`	`grpc`	`grpc` (OTLP/gRPC) or `http` (OTLP/HTTP protobuf)
`address`	`127.0.0.1:4317` (grpc), `127.0.0.1:4318` (http)	Listen address. Loopback by default — accepting remote OTLP requires an explicit address (e.g. `"0.0.0.0:4317"`); pair it with the protections below
`port`	from `address`	Convenience override: replaces only the port part of the address
`http_path`	`/v1/metrics`	Route served by the HTTP receiver (ignored for gRPC)
`bearer_token`	none	When set, senders must present `Authorization: Bearer <token>` (HTTP header or gRPC metadata). Use `${env:VAR}` or `${file:/path}` substitution, never a literal token
`allowed_cidrs`	none	Source IP allow-list (CIDR notation, IPv4/IPv6). Checked against the transport peer address — proxy headers are not trusted
`rate_limit_rps`	`0` (off)	Accepted requests per second (token bucket). Excess requests get HTTP 429 / gRPC `ResourceExhausted`
`rate_limit_burst`	`2 × rps`	Bucket burst capacity

Opening the receiver to the network with all protections:

probes:
  - name: otlp-in
    type: otlp_receiver
    params:
      protocol: grpc
      address: "0.0.0.0:4317"
      bearer_token: "${env:OTLP_INGEST_TOKEN}"
      allowed_cidrs: ["10.0.0.0/8"]
      rate_limit_rps: 100

Run two instances to serve both protocols at once:

probes:
  - name: otlp-grpc
    type: otlp_receiver
    params:
      protocol: grpc
  - name: otlp-http
    type: otlp_receiver
    params:
      protocol: http

Behavior¶

Resource attributes become tags. host.name, service.name and every other resource attribute is folded onto each datapoint, so downstream sinks can group by origin. Per-datapoint attributes win on key collisions.
Scalar metrics only. Gauges and Sums are ingested. Histograms, exponential histograms and summaries are dropped and reported in the OTLP partial-success response — the sender's SDK logs it.
Pass-through naming. Ingested metric names are forwarded unchanged; nothing is renamed or prefixed.
Limits. gRPC accepts payloads up to 4 MiB (the OTel SDK default); the HTTP server applies a 30-second read timeout.

Operational notes¶

A bind failure (port already taken) surfaces at probe start, not silently at runtime.
The listener accepts plaintext OTLP. Keep it on localhost or a trusted network segment; for cross-network ingestion put a TLS terminator or an OTel collector in front.
Shutdown is graceful on both protocols: in-flight requests finish before the agent exits.