A receiver is how data gets into the OpenTelemetry Collector. Generally, a receiver accepts data in a specified format, translates it into the internal format and passes it to processors and exporters defined in the applicable pipelines. The format of the traces and metrics supported are receiver specific.

Supported trace receivers (sorted alphabetically):

• Jaeger Receiver
• OpenCensus Receiver
• OpenTelemetry Receiver
• Zipkin Receiver

Supported metric receivers (sorted alphabetically):

• Host Metrics Receiver
• OpenCensus Receiver
• OpenTelemetry Receiver
• Prometheus Receiver
• VM Metrics Receiver

The contributors repository has more receivers that can be added to custom builds of the collector.

Receivers are configured via YAML under the top-level receivers tag. There must be at least one enabled receiver for a configuration to be considered valid.

The following is a sample configuration for the examplereceiver.

receivers:
  # Receiver 1.
  # <receiver type>:
  examplereceiver:
    # <setting one>: <value one>
    endpoint: 1.2.3.4:8080
    # ...
  # Receiver 2.
  # <receiver type>/<name>:
  examplereceiver/settings:
    # <setting two>: <value two>
    endpoint: 0.0.0.0:9211

A receiver instance is referenced by its full name in other parts of the config, such as in pipelines. A full name consists of the receiver type, '/' and the name appended to the receiver type in the configuration. All receiver full names must be unique. For the example above:

• Receiver 1 has full name examplereceiver.
• Receiver 2 has full name examplereceiver/settings.

All receivers expose a setting to disable it, by default receivers are enabled. At least one receiver must be enabled per pipeline to be a valid configuration.