AWS

Three separate things, and most accounts want two of them:

What	How
Your own services	Instrument the app, send direct or via a collector
Managed AWS services (RDS, ELB, SQS)	CloudWatch metric stream, via the CloudFormation stack
Host metrics (CPU, memory, disk)	The collector’s `hostmetrics` receiver

ECS and Fargate — collector sidecar

On Fargate you cannot run a node agent, so the collector goes in the task as a second container. Your app talks to it over localhost and only the collector holds the key.

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      http: { endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318 }

processors:
  batch: { timeout: 5s }
  resourcedetection:
    detectors: [env, ecs]
    timeout: 2s

exporters:
  otlphttp/rocketgraph:
    endpoint: https://ingress.rocketlog.io
    headers:
      Authorization: "Bearer ${ROCKETGRAPH_API_KEY}"

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:  { receivers: [otlp], processors: [resourcedetection, batch], exporters: [otlphttp/rocketgraph] }
    metrics: { receivers: [otlp], processors: [resourcedetection, batch], exporters: [otlphttp/rocketgraph] }
    logs:    { receivers: [otlp], processors: [resourcedetection, batch], exporters: [otlphttp/rocketgraph] }

In the task definition, run the collector alongside your app:

{
  "name": "otel-collector",
  "image": "public.ecr.aws/aws-observability/aws-otel-collector:latest",
  "secrets": [
    { "name": "ROCKETGRAPH_API_KEY",
      "valueFrom": "arn:aws:secretsmanager:us-east-2:<account-id>:secret:rocketgraph-api-key" }
  ],
  "essential": false
}

Two things worth copying: essential: false so a collector crash does not kill the task, and the key delivered through secrets from Secrets Manager rather than a plain environment variable readable by anyone with ecs:DescribeTaskDefinition.

Your app container then needs only:

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-service

Lambda — the ADOT layer

aws lambda update-function-configuration \
  --function-name my-function \
  --layers "arn:aws:lambda:<region>:901920570463:layer:aws-otel-<runtime>-<arch>-ver-<version>:<n>" \
  --environment "Variables={
    AWS_LAMBDA_EXEC_WRAPPER=/opt/otel-handler,
    OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-function,
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingress.rocketlog.io,
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf,
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=Authorization=Bearer rg_live_xxxxxx
  }"

Layer ARNs are region- and runtime-specific and AWS revises them — get the current one from the ADOT Lambda docs rather than copying an ARN.

AWS_LAMBDA_EXEC_WRAPPER=/opt/otel-handler is what activates the layer. Attaching the layer without it is the most common reason a Lambda reports nothing.

Lambda freezes the environment when the handler returns, which can strand buffered spans until the next invocation. For low-traffic functions, export synchronously:

OTEL_BSP_SCHEDULE_DELAY=100
OTEL_BSP_MAX_EXPORT_BATCH_SIZE=1

EC2 — collector as a systemd service

sudo rpm -Uvh https://aws-otel-collector.s3.amazonaws.com/amazon_linux/amd64/latest/aws-otel-collector.rpm
sudo systemctl enable --now aws-otel-collector

Use the same config as the sidecar above, swapping the ecs detector for ec2 and adding the hostmetrics receiver for CPU, memory, disk and network.

Managed services

Instrumentation only covers services you deploy. For RDS, ELB, SQS and Lambda platform metrics, use the CloudFormation stack on the Infrastructure → AWS page of your dashboard, which sets up a CloudWatch metric stream into the same ingress.

Metric streams do not cross regions — an account spanning us-east-1 and us-east-2 needs the stack deployed in both.

Getting started

Instrumentation

Platforms

Infrastructure

Connect existing tools

Logging

Features

ECS and Fargate — collector sidecar

Lambda — the ADOT layer

EC2 — collector as a systemd service

Managed services

​ECS and Fargate — collector sidecar

​Lambda — the ADOT layer

​EC2 — collector as a systemd service

​Managed services

ECS and Fargate — collector sidecar

Lambda — the ADOT layer

EC2 — collector as a systemd service

Managed services