How to select your OpenTelemetry deployment

In the OpenTelemetry deployment strategy landscape, the no-collector pattern sends telemetry signals directly from applications to backends without using an OTel Collector. This approach provides minimal configuration and management overhead but tightly couples the application to the backend, leading to potential service interruptions if the backend becomes unavailable. In contrast, the agent collector deployment pattern introduces a single instance of the OTel Collector between the application and the backend, offering benefits such as a local cache for storing telemetry data and pipeline processors for enriching signals. The gateway collector deployment pattern introduces an additional layer of aggregation, consolidating data streams before pre-processing telemetry data or applying policies, making it suitable for large-scale environments with complex requirements. When considering which deployment strategy to use, factors such as the need for identical data pipelines, tail-based sampling, and processing pipelines should be taken into account.

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