opentelemetry-collector-config-review

OpenTelemetry Collector Config Review

Purpose

Review OpenTelemetry Operator-managed OpenTelemetryCollector and Instrumentation resources against pipeline correctness, deployment-mode appropriateness, memory safety, sampling integrity, exporter security, and Kubernetes-attribute enrichment. Telemetry pipelines fail silently — a misconfigured exporter drops every span; a missing memory_limiter OOMs the collector; a deleted Instrumentation resource stops auto-instrumentation on next pod restart.

Lean operating rules

• Prefer live cluster evidence (kubectl get opentelemetrycollectors,instrumentations -A -o yaml plus collector logs and metrics) when the active client exposes it; otherwise fall back to official OpenTelemetry documentation (opentelemetry.io, opentelemetry-operator) and sanitized YAML.
• Separate confirmed facts from inference. If collector pipeline state, exporter health, or Instrumentation propagation was not queried, say so.
• Treat a pipeline with no exporter (or with only debug exporter in production) as a critical finding — telemetry is dropped at the collector.
• Treat removal of the memory_limiter processor as a critical finding — collector OOMs and loses spans/metrics on burst traffic.
• Treat removal of the k8sattributes processor as a high finding — telemetry loses k8s.namespace.name, k8s.pod.name, k8s.deployment.name, and SLO dashboards lose context.
• Challenge tail sampling rule changes — past spans are not re-evaluated; sampling drift is permanent for already-collected windows.
• Challenge Instrumentation CR removal in a running namespace — auto-instrumented pods stop emitting telemetry after their next restart.
• Challenge collector exporters with tls.insecure: true in production — telemetry data flows in plaintext, often containing PII/PHI.
• Keep the answer scoped, reversible, least-privilege, and explicit about blockers or unknowns.

References

Load these only when needed:

• Evidence path and tooling — use when choosing live evidence, confirming Operator version and Collector pipeline state, or switching to documentation mode.
• Workflow and output contract — use when executing the full review, applying stress checks per deployment mode, or formatting the final answer.
• Official sources — use when you need the detailed OpenTelemetry documentation list, processor pipeline references, and grounded insights.

Response minimum

Return, at minimum:

• the scoped target (OpenTelemetryCollector of which mode, Instrumentation CR, or pipeline element) and evidence level,
• the deployment-mode appropriateness (Deployment / StatefulSet / DaemonSet / Sidecar) for the use case,
• the pipeline correctness (receivers, processors, exporters all present and ordered safely),
• the failure mode if exporter is unreachable or downstream is full (queue, drop, retry semantics),
• the safest next actions and rollback plan,
• the assumptions or blockers that prevent stronger conclusions.