A guide to scaling OpenTelemetry Collectors across multiple hosts via Ansible

OpenTelemetry has become a crucial open-source tool for managing telemetry data, and this guide focuses on scaling the OpenTelemetry Collector across multiple Linux hosts using Ansible, enabling them to act as gateways and agents in observability architectures. By leveraging Ansible's ease of use and versatility, the guide simplifies the deployment, installation, and management of OpenTelemetry Collectors, which collect and forward metrics, traces, and logs to platforms like Grafana Cloud. The process involves setting up Linux hosts with SSH access, installing the Grafana Ansible collection, creating an inventory file, and configuring Ansible playbooks to deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector. Once deployed, users can verify data ingestion into Grafana Cloud and create custom dashboards to visualize the collected data, ultimately enhancing monitoring and observability capabilities. The guide provides insights on tailoring configurations to specific needs and highlights additional resources for further exploration of OpenTelemetry and Grafana's integration.