K8sobjects Receiver

Available in: contrib, k8s Maintainers: @dmitryax, @hvaghani221, @TylerHelmuth, @ChrsMark, @krisztianfekete Source: opentelemetry-collector-contrib

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Currently this receiver supports authentication via service accounts only. See example for more information.

Getting Started

The following is example configuration

  k8s_objects:
    auth_type: serviceAccount
    storage: file_storage
    k8s_leader_elector: k8s_leader_elector
    interval: 30m
    objects:
      - name: pods
        mode: pull
        label_selector: environment in (production),tier in (frontend)
        field_selector: status.phase=Running
        interval: 15m
        exclude_namespaces:
          - regexp: namespace-to-ignore
      - name: events
        mode: watch
        group: events.k8s.io
        namespaces: [default]

Brief description of configuration properties:

auth_type (default = serviceAccount): Determines how to authenticate to the K8s API server. This can be one of none (for no auth), serviceAccount (to use the standard service account token provided to the agent pod), or kubeConfig to use credentials from ~/.kube/config.
error_mode (default = propagate): Determines how to handle errors when the receiver is unable to pull or watch objects due to missing resources. This can be one of propagate, ignore, or silent.
- propagate will propagate the error to the collector as an Error.
- ignore will log and ignore the error and continue.
- silent will ignore the error and continue without logging.
interval: Top level pull interval applied to all pull-mode objects that do not set their own interval. Falls back to 1h when neither this field nor the per-resource objects[*].interval is set. Has no effect on watch-mode objects.
name: Name of the resource object to collect
mode: define in which way it collects this type of object, either “pull” or “watch”.
- pull mode will read all objects of this type use the list API at an interval.
- watch mode will do setup a long connection using the watch API to just get updates.
include_initial_state (default = false): When set to true (watch-mode only) the receiver sends a one-time snapshot of the current objects before it starts processing watch events.
label_selector: select objects by label(s)
field_selector: select objects by field(s)
objects[*].interval: per-resource pull interval override. When set, takes precedence over the top-level interval. Only applies to pull mode objects.
exclude_watch_type: allows excluding specific watch types. Valid values are ADDED, MODIFIED, DELETED, BOOKMARK, and ERROR. Only usable in watch mode.
resource_version: allows watching resources starting from a specific version (default = 1). Only available for watch mode. If not specified, the receiver will do an initial list to get the resourceVersion before starting the watch. See Efficient Detection of Change for details on why this is necessary.
namespaces: An array of namespaces to collect events from. (default = all)
exclude_namespaces: allows excluding namespaces from being watched/pulled, (NOTE: if a new namespace that matches the regex is added, the collector will need to be restarted)
group: API group name. It is an optional config. When given resource object is present in multiple groups, use this config to specify the group to select. By default, it will select the first group. For example, events resource is available in both v1 and events.k8s.io/v1 APIGroup. In this case, it will select v1 by default.
kube_api_qps (default = 5): Maximum number of queries per second to the Kubernetes API. Increase this if you see client-side throttling warnings in the collector logs when watching or polling many resources simultaneously.
kube_api_burst (default = 10): Maximum burst size for requests to the Kubernetes API. Increase this alongside kube_api_qps if you see client-side throttling warnings.
k8s_leader_elector (default: none): if specified, will enable Leader Election by using k8sleaderelector extension
storage (default: none): specifies the storage extension to use for persisting resourceVersions. When configured, the receiver automatically persists the resourceVersion after processing each event for all watch-mode objects. On restart, each watch-mode object resumes from its persisted resourceVersion, preventing duplicate events. Pull-mode objects are unaffected.
Important storage considerations:
- Local or node-pinned volumes (hostPath, local PV): the collector pod becomes tied to a specific node. If that node fails or the pod is rescheduled elsewhere, the persisted data will not be accessible and persistence will not work correctly.
- Network-attached volumes (ReadWriteMany): the volume is accessible from any node, so the collector pod can be freely rescheduled or fail over to a different node while still resuming from the correct resourceVersion. This is the recommended approach, especially when used with k8s_leader_elector.
- Block volumes (ReadWriteOnce): supported for single-replica deployments where restarts are graceful. Not recommended with leader election across multiple nodes, as Kubernetes may take 30–90 seconds to detach and reattach the volume after a node failure.

The full list of settings exposed for this receiver are documented in config.go with detailed sample configurations in testdata/config.yaml. Follow the below sections to setup various Kubernetes resources required for the deployment.

Supported Kubernetes objects

The k8sobjectsreceiver supports collecting a wide range of standard Kubernetes objects from the API server. For example, the mostly used supported objects (in addition to other standard Kubernetes objects) are:

pods
events
nodes
jobs
cronjobs
deployments
services
configmaps
secrets
statefulsets
replicasets
daemonsets
namespaces

This receiver supports both pull and watch modes, allowing for flexible and real-time monitoring of these objects. Please note that custom resources are supported only if their CRDs are available in the cluster.

Configuration

Create a ConfigMap with the config for otelcontribcol. Replace OTLP_ENDPOINT with valid value.

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: otelcontribcol
  labels:
    app: otelcontribcol
data:
  config.yaml: |
    extensions:
      file_storage:
        directory: /var/lib/otelcol/storage

    receivers:
      k8s_objects:
        auth_type: serviceAccount
        storage: file_storage
        objects:
          - name: pods
            mode: pull
          - name: events
            mode: watch

    exporters:
      otlp_grpc:
        endpoint: <OTLP_ENDPOINT>
        tls:
          insecure: true

    service:
      extensions: [file_storage]
      pipelines:
        logs:
          receivers: [k8s_objects]
          exporters: [otlp_grpc]
EOF

Service Account

Create a service account that the collector should use.

<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: ServiceAccount
metadata:
  labels:
    app: otelcontribcol
  name: otelcontribcol
EOF

RBAC

Use the below commands to create a ClusterRole with required permissions and a ClusterRoleBinding to grant the role to the service account created above. Following config will work for collecting pods and events only. You need to add appropriate rule for collecting other objects. When using watch mode you must also specify list verb so that the receiver has permission to do its initial list if no resource_version was supplied or a list to recover from 410 Gone scenarios.

<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRole
metadata:
  name: otelcontribcol
  labels:
    app: otelcontribcol
rules:
- apiGroups:
  - ""
  resources:
  - events
  - pods
  - namespaces
  verbs:
  - get
  - list
  - watch
- apiGroups:
  - "events.k8s.io"
  resources:
  - events
  verbs:
  - watch
  - list
EOF

<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/v1
kind: ClusterRoleBinding
metadata:
  name: otelcontribcol
  labels:
    app: otelcontribcol
roleRef:
  apiGroup: rbac.authorization.k8s.io
  kind: ClusterRole
  name: otelcontribcol
subjects:
- kind: ServiceAccount
  name: otelcontribcol
  namespace: default
EOF

Deployment

Create a Deployment to deploy the collector. Note: This receiver must be deployed as one replica, otherwise it’ll be producing duplicated data.

<<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
apiVersion: v1
kind: PersistentVolumeClaim
metadata:
  name: otelcontribcol-storage
spec:
  accessModes:
    - ReadWriteOnce
  resources:
    requests:
      storage: 1Gi
---
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  name: otelcontribcol
  labels:
    app: otelcontribcol
spec:
  replicas: 1
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: otelcontribcol
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: otelcontribcol
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: otelcontribcol
      containers:
      - name: otelcontribcol
        # This image is created by running `make docker-otelcontribcol`.
        # If you are not building the collector locally, specify a published image: `otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib`
        image: otelcontribcol:latest
        args: ["--config", "/etc/config/config.yaml"]
        volumeMounts:
        - name: config
          mountPath: /etc/config
        - name: storage
          mountPath: /var/lib/otelcol/storage
        imagePullPolicy: IfNotPresent
      volumes:
        - name: config
          configMap:
            name: otelcontribcol
        - name: storage
          persistentVolumeClaim:
            claimName: otelcontribcol-storage
EOF

Compatibility

Kubernetes Versions

This receiver is tested against the Kubernetes versions specified in the e2e-tests.yml workflow. These tested versions represent the officially supported Kubernetes versions for this component.

Troubleshooting

If receiver returns error similar to below, make sure that resource is added to ClusterRole.

{"kind": "receiver", "name": "k8s_objects", "pipeline": "logs", "resource": "events.k8s.io/v1, Resource=events", "error": "unknown"}

Configuration

Example Configuration

k8s_objects:
  include_initial_state: false
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: pull
      interval: 1h
      label_selector: environment in (production),tier in (frontend)
      field_selector: status.phase=Running
    - name: events
      mode: watch
      group: events.k8s.io
      namespaces: [default]
      exclude_watch_type: [DELETED]
k8s_objects/pull_with_resource:
  include_initial_state: false
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: pull
      interval: 1h
      resource_version: "1"
    - name: events
      mode: pull
      interval: 1h
k8s_objects/watch_with_resource:
  objects:
    - name: events
      mode: watch
      group: events.k8s.io
      namespaces: [default]
    - name: events
      mode: watch
      group: events.k8s.io
      namespaces: [default]
      resource_version: "2"
k8s_objects/watch_with_initial_state:
  include_initial_state: true
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: watch
      namespaces: [default]
    - name: events
      mode: watch
      group: events.k8s.io
      namespaces: [default]
k8s_objects/watch_without_initial_state:
  include_initial_state: false
  objects:
    - name: events
      mode: watch
      group: events.k8s.io
      namespaces: [default]
k8s_objects/invalid_resource:
  objects:
    - name: fake_resource
      mode: watch
k8s_objects/exclude_deleted_with_pull:
  include_initial_state: false
  objects:
    - name: events
      mode: pull
      exclude_watch_type: [DELETED]
k8s_objects/invalid_mode:
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: invalid_mode
k8s_objects/exclude_namespaces:
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: watch
      exclude_namespaces:
        - regexp: default_ignore
k8s_objects/top_level_interval:
  auth_type: serviceAccount
  interval: 30m
  objects:
    - name: pods
      mode: pull
    - name: nodes
      mode: pull
      interval: 5m

Last generated: 2026-06-01

​K8sobjects Receiver

​Supported Telemetry

​Overview

​Getting Started

​Supported Kubernetes objects

​Configuration

​Service Account

​RBAC

​Deployment

​Compatibility

​Kubernetes Versions

​Troubleshooting

​Configuration

​Example Configuration

K8sobjects Receiver

Supported Telemetry

Overview

Getting Started

Supported Kubernetes objects

Configuration

Service Account

RBAC

Deployment

Compatibility

Kubernetes Versions

Troubleshooting

Configuration

Example Configuration