Interval Processor

Available in: contrib, k8s Maintainers: @RichieSams Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Description

The interval processor (intervalprocessor) aggregates metrics and periodically forwards the latest values to the next component in the pipeline. The processor supports aggregating the following metric types:

Monotonically increasing, cumulative sums
Monotonically increasing, cumulative histograms
Monotonically increasing, cumulative exponential histograms
Gauges
Summaries

The following metric types will not be aggregated, and will instead be passed, unchanged, to the next component in the pipeline:

All delta metrics
Non-monotonically increasing sums

NOTE: Aggregating data over an interval is an inherently “lossy” process. For monotonically increasing, cumulative sums, histograms, and exponential histograms, you “lose” precision, but you don’t lose overall data. But for non-monotonically increasing sums, gauges, and summaries, aggregation represents actual data loss. IE you could “lose” that a value increased and then decreased back to the original value. In most cases, this data “loss” is ok. However, if you would rather these values be passed through, and not aggregated, you can set that in the configuration

Configuration

The following settings can be optionally configured:

interval:
  # The interval in which the processor should export the aggregated metrics. 
  [ interval: <duration> | default = 60s ]
  
  pass_through:
    # Whether gauges should be aggregated or passed through to the next component as they are
    [ gauge: <bool> | default = false ]
    # Whether summaries should be aggregated or passed through to the next component as they are
    [ summary: <boo>l | default = false ]

Example of metric flows

The following sum metrics come into the processor to be handled

Timestamp	Metric Name	Aggregation Temporality	Attributes	Value
0	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: foo	4.0
2	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: bar	3.1
4	other_metric	Delta	fruitType: orange	77.4
6	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: foo	8.2
8	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: foo	12.8
10	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: bar	6.4

The processor would immediately pass the following metrics to the next processor in the chain

Timestamp	Metric Name	Aggregation Temporality	Attributes	Value
4	other_metric	Delta	fruitType: orange	77.4

Because it’s a Delta metric. At the next interval (15s by default), the processor would pass the following metrics to the next processor in the chain

Timestamp	Metric Name	Aggregation Temporality	Attributes	Value
8	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: foo	12.8
10	test_metric	Cumulative	labelA: bar	6.4

[!IMPORTANT] After exporting, any internal state is cleared. So if no new metrics come in, the next interval will export nothing.

Last generated: 2026-04-13

Collector components

​Interval Processor

​Supported Telemetry

​Overview

​Description

​Configuration

​Example of metric flows