How to use OpenTelemetry and Grafana Alloy to convert delta to cumulative at scale

Migrating to a Prometheus-like ecosystem such as Grafana Cloud from platforms using different temporalities, like Datadog or Dynatrace, is streamlined by using OpenTelemetry and Grafana Alloy. This integration addresses the challenge of converting delta metrics, which report relative changes, to cumulative metrics, which represent absolute values over time. Grafana Labs has enhanced the OpenTelemetry Collector with a deltatocumulative processor to facilitate this conversion, allowing delta samples to be sent to cumulative backends such as Prometheus. However, this conversion process requires stateful operations, necessitating that each sample of a time series is consistently routed to the same collector instance. To manage this, a load-balancing exporter with streamID-based routing is employed, ensuring samples of the same series are directed to a stable collector endpoint. This setup uses Docker Compose for container orchestration, allowing metrics to be generated, routed, and converted before being sent to a backend like Grafana Cloud. The process is scalable, with even distribution of data points across multiple worker instances, but it remains in early stages, inviting community feedback and contributions to further refine its operational complexity.

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