OpenTelemetry

Artillery can send data to any OpenTelemetry -compatible backend, including a self-hosted OTel Collector .

Configuration

Requirements

In most cases basic configuration will require:

• OTLP endpoint for the metrics and/or traces
• An auth key sent via a vendor-specific header

Configuration Template

config:
  plugins:
    publish-metrics:
      - type: 'open-telemetry'
        serviceName: <your-service-name>
        # Set attributes for all resources (metrics and traces):
        resourceAttributes:
          custom-attribute: some-value
        metrics:
          endpoint: '{{ $env.OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT }}'
          headers:
            <auth-header-name>: '{{ $env.API_KEY }}'
        traces:
          endpoint: '{{ $env.OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT }}'
          headers:
            <auth-header-name>: '{{ $env.API_KEY }}'

Steps

• Set serviceName to the name of your service. It will apply to both metrics and traces
• Specify signal types you want to send and configure them with:
  • endpoint for the signal type in question
  • headers in key: value format. (The authentication (e.g. API key) is usually provided via header of platform specific format)

This information can be found in your chosen observability backends documentation.

Configuration options

Example configuration

config:
  publish-metrics:
    - type: 'open-telemetry'
      serviceName: 'my service'
      metrics:
        exporter: 'otlp-http'
        endpoint: '{{ $env.OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_METRICS_ENDPOINT }}'
        headers:
          Api-Key: '{{ $env.API_KEY }}'
        attributes:
          environment: 'test'
      traces:
        exporter: 'otlp-proto'
        endpoint: '{{ $env.OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT }}'
        headers:
          Authorization: '{{ $env.API_KEY }}'
        replaceSpanNameRegex:
          - pattern: get_user_[a-zA-Z0-9]+
            as: get_user_id
        attributes:
          environment: 'test'
          tool: 'Artillery'
        smartSampling:
          thresholds:
            firstByte: 500

Main

Metrics

Traces

An additional plugins.publish-metrics.spans.exported metric will be recorded and will appear in your reports when tracing is enabled. It represents the number of spans exported.

Smart sampling (HTTP engine)

When smartSampling is set for traces, only traces that are considered outliers will be exported. Traces that pass the following criteria are considered outliers:

• Errors - any span with error status (e.g. request that failed due to an error)
• HTTP Status Code 400 or more
• Exceeded time to first byte (TTFB ) threshold (if set with firstByte)
• Exceeded total request time threshold (if set with total)

traces:
  smartSampling:
    thresholds:
      firstByte: 500
      total: 2000

Thresholds:

plugins:
  publish-metrics:
    - type: 'open-telemetry'
      serviceName: <your-service-name>
      traces:
        endpoint: '{{ $env.OTLP_TRACES_ENDPOINT }}'
        headers:
          <auth-header-name>: '{{ $env.API_KEY }}'
        smartSampling:
          thresholds:
            firstByte: 500
            total: 2000

  plugins:
    publish-metrics:
      - type: "open-telemetry"
        metrics: {}
        traces: {}

Debugging

Set DEBUG=plugin:publish-metrics:open-telemetry when running your tests to print out helpful debugging messages when sending metrics and/or traces with OpenTelemetry.

DEBUG=plugin:publish-metrics:open-telemetry artillery run my-script.yaml