Install the NGINX Agent

You can download the NGINX Agent artifact from GitHub. For more information about this artifact, see OTel Web Server Module. The NGINX Agent is based on CentOS 7 and contains shared libraries for Apache and NGINX instrumentation. The shared libraries are available at WebServerModule/Apache or WebServerModule/Nginx for respective web servers. However, the common libraries for OpenTelemetry are available at sdk_lib/lib/. The shared libraries are used for both Apache and NGINX instrumentation.

Currently, the NGINX Agent build is based on the x86-64 architecture. Therefore, the artifact should work on any Linux distribution running on the x86-64 platform and having glibc version >= 2.17.

Make sure to deploy the OTEL collector and configure the exporter OTLPHTTP endpoint to the Splunk AppDynamics SaaS OpenTelemetry ingestion service endpoint. For more details on collector and how to configure it, see Splunk AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry™.

Download and Install the Agent

1. Download the NGINX Agent from GitHub. 

2. Extract and install the agent to /opt.
   

   tar -xf opentelemetry-webserver-sdk-x64-linux.tgz -C /opt
   cd /opt/opentelemetry-webserver-sdk/
   ./install.sh

   CODE
3. Copy the conf/nginx/opentelemetry_module.conf file to /opt/. See Sample OpenTelemetry Module Configuration File.
4. Edit the directives values according to your deployment environment. For example, NginxModuleOtelExporterEndpoint must point to the Collector URL.
5. Edit the nginx.conf file to provide a reference to opentelemetry_module.conf and shared library. See Sample NGINX Configuration File.

6. Follow the below command sequence and location while referring to conf/nginx/nginx.conf.

   load_module /opt/opentelemetry-webserver-sdk/WebServerModule/Nginx/ngx_http_opentelemetry_module.so;
   include /opt/opentelemetry_module.conf;

   CODE

7. Before you start the NGINX Agent, update LD_LIBRARY_PATH to load OpenTelemetry dependencies.

   export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=$LD_LIBRARY_PATH:/opt/opentelemetry-webserver-sdk/sdk_lib/lib
   

   CODE

NginxModuleEnabled ON;
#NginxModule Otel Exporter details
NginxModuleOtelSpanExporter otlp;
NginxModuleOtelExporterEndpoint docker.for.mac.localhost:4317;
# SSL Certificates
#NginxModuleOtelSslEnabled ON
#NginxModuleOtelSslCertificatePath 
#NginxModuleOtelSpanProcessor Batch
#NginxModuleOtelSampler AlwaysOn
#NginxModuleOtelMaxQueueSize 1024
#NginxModuleOtelScheduledDelayMillis 3000
#NginxModuleOtelExportTimeoutMillis 30000
#NginxModuleOtelMaxExportBatchSize 1024
NginxModuleServiceName DemoService;
NginxModuleServiceNamespace DemoServiceNamespace;
NginxModuleServiceInstanceId DemoInstanceId;
NginxModuleResolveBackends ON;
NginxModuleTraceAsError ON;
#NginxModuleWebserverContext DemoService     DemoServiceNamespace DemoInstanceId
#NginxModuleSegmentType custom
#NginxModuleSegmentParameter 15,1,6,7

user nginx;
	worker_processes 1;
	 
	error_log /var/log/nginx/error.log warn;
	pid /var/run/nginx.pid;
	 
	load_module /opt/opentelemetry-webserver-sdk/WebServerModule/Nginx/ngx_http_opentelemetry_module.so;
	 
	events {
	 worker_connections 1024;
	}
	 
	 
	http {
	 include /etc/nginx/mime.types;
	 default_type application/octet-stream;
	 
	 log_format  main '$remote_addr - $remote_user [$time_local] "$request" '
	 '$status $body_bytes_sent "$http_referer" '
	 '"$http_user_agent" "$http_x_forwarded_for"';
	 
	 access_log /var/log/nginx/access.log  main;
	 
	 sendfile  on;
	 #tcp_nopush on;
	 
	 keepalive_timeout 65;
	 
	 #gzip on;
	 
	 include /etc/nginx/conf.d/*.conf;
	include /opt/opentelemetry_module.conf;
	}

Configuration Directives

You can configure these directives based on your deployment needs. A dash ("-") in a table cell indicates that this column is not relevant to the directive.

Visualizing on Splunk AppDynamics

This image shows how the NGINX Agent data is visualized on the Controller.