Managing Collectors at Scale: OpAMP and Fleet Management (Grafana OTel Community Call #11)
In this episode of the Grafana OTel Community Call, we're joined by Bejal Lewis and Paschalis Tsilias from Grafana Labs to talk about OpAMP, the Open Agent Management Protocol, and what it takes to manage OpenTelemetry Collectors at scale. We'll cover what OpAMP is and why fleet management matters, where the spec stands today (it's still pre-release), and what it was like building production tooling on top of it.
We'll also look at what went into adding the OpAMP extension to Grafana Alloy's OTel Engine, what "GA" means for Grafana Fleet Management versus the maturity of the upstream spec, and where OpAMP is headed next.
Guests:
· Bejal Lewis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bejal-lewis/)
· Marko Bachvarovski (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markobachvarovski/)
Host:
· Imma Valls (https://www.linkedin.com/in/imma-valls/)
Join the conversation, bring your questions, and learn how OpenTelemetry evolves with contributions from across the community.
#opentelemetry #fleetmanagement #opamp #grafana #observability
URLS
· https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2026/kubecon-na/
· https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/opamp/
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/opamp-spec
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/opamp-go
· https://github.com/grafana/alloy/pull/6632
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/cmd/opampsupervisor/specification/README.md
· https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/deploy/other/agent-to-gateway/#when-to-use-this-pattern
· https://grafana.com/whats-new/2026-07-08-remote-management-of-opentelemetry-collectors-is-generally-available/
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/community/blob/main/sigs.md#opamp
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/cmd/opampsupervisor/specification/README.md#supervisor-configuration
· https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/pkgs/container/opentelemetry-operator%2Foperator-opamp-bridge
· https://grafana.com/blog/manage-your-opentelemetry-collectors-with-fleet-management-in-grafana-cloud/#making-otel-configuration-work-across-multiple-pipelines
TIMESTAMPS
00:00 Welcome, announcements, and guest introductions
03:27 What is OpAMP, and why does it matter?
07:31 OpAMP extension vs. supervisor
10:16 Contributing to OpAMP and open challenges
16:03 Building on an evolving specification
19:35 OpAMP capabilities: configuration, health, and updates
22:36 How Grafana Fleet Management uses OpAMP
26:21 Integrating the OpAMP supervisor into Alloy
29:36 Live demo: connecting Alloy and pushing remote configuration
34:35 Managing mixed fleets and scaling in production
38:32 Gateway deployment patterns
41:28 Kubernetes challenges and the OpAMP Bridge
43:39 Merging configurations and avoiding conflicts
50:25 Upstream priorities and the path to GA
57:09 Getting involved, trying it out, and closing takeaways