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Run a cluster gateway for Kubernetes

Cluster-level gateway that receives OTLP from apps and node agents, tails pod logs, stamps deployment.environment, deletes a PII attribute, and ships everything to your OTLP/HTTP backend with a debug tap on logs.

The cluster's central collector: applications and node agents send OTLP here, and the gateway also tails pod logs directly for anything that only writes to stdout. Every record gets deployment.environment: production stamped on the resource, and the attributes processor deletes user.ssn before anything leaves the cluster. Extend that list with whatever your compliance reviews turn up.

Export goes to your OTLP/HTTP backend via OTLP_GATEWAY_ENDPOINT (a Grafana Cloud OTLP gateway URL works verbatim). The debug exporter on the logs pipeline prints basic output for on-cluster troubleshooting; drop it from the pipeline once the setup is proven.

How the data moves
receiverprocessorexporterextension
traces
otlpmemory_limiterresourcebatchotlphttp
metrics
otlpmemory_limiterresourcebatchotlphttp
logs
otlpfilelogmemory_limiterresourceattributesbatchotlphttpdebug

Use this flow

Open the config in Telflo and it becomes a working pipeline on the canvas: adapt what's specific to you, test it against recorded traffic, and push it to your fleet over OpAMP. Free account, no card.

Components

What's in it, and why

otlp

Receives traces, metrics, and logs from applications and from the node agents, over gRPC and HTTP.

filelog

Tails pod logs on the gateway host for workloads that only write to stdout, starting at the end of each file.

memory_limiter

First processor in every pipeline, so backpressure reaches the receivers before the gateway runs out of memory.

resource

Stamps deployment.environment: production on every record passing through the gateway.

batch

Batches at 1024 records or 10 seconds, whichever comes first, before export.

attributes

Deletes the user.ssn attribute before anything leaves the cluster; the list is meant to grow with your compliance reviews.

otlphttp

Ships everything to the OTLP/HTTP backend named by OTLP_GATEWAY_ENDPOINT.

debug

Prints basic log output on the cluster for troubleshooting; remove it from the pipeline once the setup is proven.

health_check

Exposes the liveness endpoint on 13133 for Kubernetes probes.

Notes

Gotchas

  • 1

    The debug exporter stays on the logs pipeline in this template. It writes to the collector's own stdout, which the node agents then collect, so leaving it enabled in production feeds logs back into your pipeline.

  • 2

    attributes deletes exactly one key (user.ssn). It is a starting point, not a redaction policy; the PII redaction gateway flow covers pattern-based masking.

  • 3

    filelog here starts at the end of each file, so logs written while the gateway was down are not backfilled.

  • 4

    The gateway tails /var/log/pods directly, which needs a hostPath mount and the matching read permissions on the pod.

Test it before your fleet runs it

Free account, no card. Open this flow in the editor, adapt it, and see what it does to real data before anything ships.