Windows OTel Collector (Beta)

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Legal

The Windows OTel collector is provided by ScienceLogicwith the following terms:

You may use, modify, reproduce, and distribute this freely and without restriction, provided as a condition of our provision to use the software you acknowledge that the software is provided as-is, and ScienceLogic will not have any monetary liability in association with the distribution of this software.

Overview

The following instructions explain how to install the Open Telemetry (OTel) Collector on a Windows system using PowerShell.

This feature is currently Beta. For access to this collector, contact Skylar Automated RCA at support@sciencelogic.com.

Prerequisite

The Windows OTel collector requires you to install the Visual Studio 2015 or later Redistributable package. For more information, see https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/cpp/windows/latest-supported-vc-redist?view=msvc-170#visual-studio-2015-2017-2019-and-2022.

Windows OTel Collector Installation

Before starting, you will need to obtain a copy of the OTel Collector .zip file for Windows:

  1. Unzip the otelcol-sciencelogic-zebrium_Windows_x86_64.zip archive:

    Expand-Archive ./otelcol-sciencelogic-zebrium_x86_64.zip

    cd otelcol-sciencelogic-zebrium_x86_64

  2. If your account has multiple deployments, go to the Skylar Automated RCA user interface, click the Deployment drop-down in the top-right navigation bar, and switch to the deployment you want to use to collect Windows logs.

  3. In the Skylar Automated RCA user interface, go to the Integrations & Collectors page (Settings () > Integrations & Collectors).

  4. In the Log Collectors section, click the Windows button. The Windows Log Collector dialog appears.

  5. In the dialog, copy your Skylar Automated RCA log collector URL and log collector token and click Close.

  6. Edit the otelcol.yaml file, and paste the Skylar Automated RCA log collector URL and token from step 5 into the appropriate place in the following two lines:

    endpoint: <ze_log_collector_url>

    ze_token: <ze_log_collector_token>

    More advanced configuration options are suggested in the comments if needed.

  7. Run the following install script as Administrator:

    cmd.exe /c .\InstallSciencelogicOpenTelemetryCollector.bat

    This command installs the collector as a Windows Service that generates text logs in the Logs subdirectory.

  8. After you complete these steps, logs will start streaming to your Skylar Automated RCA account. In a few minutes, you can view log activity in the Skylar Automated RCA user interface by going to the Ingest History page (Settings () > Ingest History).

Uninstalling the Windows OTel Collector

To remove the Windows OTel service, run the following command:

cmd.exe /c .\UninstallSciencelogicOpenTelemetryCollector.bat