Go to OTel Collector in the sidebar to manage collectors across all your clusters.
Collector status
Each cluster card shows a status badge:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|
| Healthy | Gateway and node collector pods are running and sending data |
| Degraded | Collector is running but reporting errors (check the error card) |
| Installing | Helm install is in progress |
| Error | Installation failed or pods crashed |
| Not installed | No collector deployed to this cluster yet |
Install a collector
- Open the OTel Collector page.
- Find the cluster card and click Install Collector.
- Obsy runs
helm install in the obsy-system namespace. The process takes 60–120 seconds.
- The status badge changes to Healthy once all pods are running.
You need at least one observability platform connected (Datadog or Grafana) before installing. The collector config includes your platform’s export endpoint and API credentials.
Reinstall / update
If you’ve changed sampling settings or connected a new platform, click Reinstall Collector on the cluster card. Obsy runs a Helm upgrade with the updated config. Active data collection continues during the upgrade (rolling update).
Collector health card
The OTel Collector Health card on the cluster detail shows live metrics read from your observability platform:
| Metric | What it means |
|---|
| Spans accepted | Traces received by the gateway per minute |
| Spans sent | Traces successfully exported to your platform |
| Failed exports | Spans dropped due to export errors |
| Memory usage | Gateway process RSS memory |
| Queue size | Number of spans queued waiting for export |
| CPU usage | Gateway process CPU seconds |
Pipeline diagram
The Your OTel Pipeline diagram on the OTel Collector page shows the live state of your pipeline — which processors are active, whether custom drop rules are configured, and whether sampling is enabled and at what rate.
Error messages
If the collector fails to install, an OTel Collector Error card appears on the cluster detail with the raw Helm error and a human-readable explanation. Common causes:
| Error | Likely cause |
|---|
cannot install in namespace: already exists | A previous install attempt partially succeeded; click Reinstall |
invalid configuration: service::pipelines: must have at least one exporter | Platform credentials are missing or expired; reconnect in Integrations |
pending-upgrade: another operation in progress | A previous upgrade timed out; Obsy auto-recovers on the next sync |
Uninstall
To remove the collector from a cluster:
helm uninstall obsy-collector -n obsy-system
kubectl delete namespace obsy-system
