Summary

In this chapter, we embarked on an in-depth exploration of data collectors within an observability stack, casting a spotlight on Telegraf and Logstash due to their industry recognition and our familiarity with them. We provided a comprehensive view of their internal architecture, how they align with the ETL pipeline for their data operations, and through the help of their plugins ecosystem, demonstrated how they fit within the broader observability landscape.

Through hands-on practice, we covered various configurations for these data collectors so that we can gather information from network devices diversely. For instance, we used Telegraf for data collection via SNMP and gNMI, synthetic monitoring with Ping, and even created a custom script to capture data over SSH and CLI commands. An important focus was also placed on the InfluxDB line protocol, emphasizing its importance in comprehending the metrics that are collected with Telegraf, setting a foundation for the upcoming...