Getting data into Infrastructure Monitoring
The first step to driving value from Splunk Observability Cloud is getting data in. As soon as you have data flowing into the Splunk Observability Cloud platform, the Infrastructure Navigator tool provides you with insights on your IT infrastructure.
No two customer environments are exactly alike, and getting data into Splunk from your specific environment may feel like a daunting task at first. However, Splunk Observability Cloud has a number of built-in tools to make getting data in as quick and painless as possible.
Where to start
We recommend that customers start with this article on Getting Data into Splunk Observability Cloud, especially if you have purchased the entire Observability Cloud Product Suite (Infrastructure Monitoring, Application Performance Monitoring, Real User Monitoring, and Synthetic Monitoring). It will provide guidance on getting data from each layer of your stack into each Observability Cloud product.
If you're not yet implementing full-stack Observability and/or are only interested in learning about getting data into Infrastructure Monitoring, please continue reading below.
Connect cloud services
Connect Splunk Observability Cloud to your cloud service provider to collect data from supported cloud services in AWS, GCP, or Azure. If you don’t use cloud services or don’t want Splunk Observability Cloud to collect data from them, skip to the next step. You do not have to connect to cloud services to monitor hosts or Kubernetes clusters that run in cloud services, but connecting your cloud account is the only way to collect cloud metadata.
To connect to a cloud service, select Navigation menu > Data setup and search for the cloud service you want to connect to.
For detailed steps on connecting cloud services to Observability Cloud, see the following:
Collect infrastructure data
Splunk Observability Cloud supports integrations for Kubernetes, Linux, and Windows. Integrations for these data sources help you deploy a Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector to export metrics from hosts and containers to Splunk Observability Cloud. Using the Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector is optional; however, you get higher-resolution data using the collector than from cloud integrations.
See these pages for more information about sending host or container metrics to Splunk Observability Cloud:
Other data sources are available and described in the integration reference documentation.
Additional Resources
Demo Video: How to Deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector
Virtual Workshop: Use the Splunk Helm chart to install the OpenTelemetry Collector in Kubernetes (15 minutes)
Tech Talk: Observability Unveiled: Navigating OpenTelemetry's Framework and Deployment Options
Verify successful data ingestion
After you have completed the setup for Getting Data In, you can verify successful ingestion by leveraging the built-in content found in-app. To view the Infrastructure Overview, select Navigation menu > Infrastructure. If your data has populated there, you have successfully completed this initial step.