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If you're looking for a straightforward way to collect NGINX metrics via OpenTelemetry and send them to your Graphite-based monitoring setup, this article is for you! With minimal configuration you’ll be collecting key metrics from your NGINX connections within minutes. In this article, we'll explain how to install the OpenTelemetry Collector, and easily configure it to receive and export NGINX metrics to a Hosted Carbon endpoint.

Getting telemetry data out of modern applications is very straightforward—or at least it should be. You set up a collector that either receives data from your application or asks it to provide an up-to-date state of various counters. This happens every minute or so, and if it’s a second late or early, no one really bats an eye. But what if the application isn’t around for long? What if every second waiting for the data to be collected is billed?

Looking for a straightforward way to collect NGINX metrics with OpenTelemetry and send them to your Graphite-based monitoring setup? Unlike Prometheus, which requires configuring scrape jobs and query language nuances, Carbon/Graphite offers a simpler setup with minimal overhead—just send metrics as plain text and query them easily with familiar tools like Grafana. Whether you're setting up dashboards, alerts, or just keeping an eye on traffic, this guide will get you actionable insights in no time!

Observability at scale is challenging—especially when dealing with high-volume distributed traces. Traditional tracing tools struggle with large traces containing thousands of spans, often leading to sluggish UIs and an unmanageable debugging experience. Most tracing tools we checked have a limit on the maximum spans they can load for a single trace. But with SigNoz, we’ve redefined what’s possible.