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.

Modern applications rely on microservices, making it tough to track issues across services. Distributed tracing helps by mapping a request’s journey and pinpointing latency, failures, and dependencies. Unlike traditional monitoring, tracing connects the dots between services, offering deeper visibility. But implementing it isn’t easy—it brings high data volumes, performance overhead, and complexity.

If you're already using OpenTelemetry for tracing and logs, adding otelcol-contrib as an agent for system metrics just makes sense. It keeps everything in the same pipeline, so you’re not juggling multiple monitoring tools or dealing with inconsistent data formats. Plus, with built-in support for host metrics, custom processing, and direct exports to Graphite, it’s a solid way to ship performance data without extra overhead.