Goals

Log collector to emit JSON log records using the Open Telemetry logs data model and general resource semantic conventions.

References

• Logs data model
• Logs Resource mappings
• Semantic Conventions

Non-Goals

• No store or console support for the OTEL model - future story.
• Initial use case is to allow forwarding logs off-cluster to an OTEL receiver.

Motivation

• Rising popularity of OTEL, integrate with external systems based on OTEL.
• Possible future use of OTEL as a common language with other observability tools.

Alternatives

Ignore OTEL.

Acceptance Criteria

• CLO optionally forwards valid OTEL logs to external OTEL collector
• Forwarding of Viaq logs is unaffected
• Verify functionality is guarded behind a feature gate

Risk and Assumptions

• Complicates the CLO
• Alternate views of the same log data are confusing if consumed in the same cluster.
• May create a need for further OTEL work (store, console)

Documentation Considerations

• Update API reference doc
• Usecase example of writing to RH managed lokiStack
• Usecase example of writing to OTEL collector
• New reference document or redirect to OpenTelementry semantic conventions we use
• Viaq/OTEL translation table, side by side with definitions.