Chainguard Container for aws-otel-collector

Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector for sending data from EKS clusters to AWS monitoring services like CloudWatch and X-Ray.

Chainguard Containers are regularly-updated, secure-by-default container images.

Download this Container Image

For those with access, this container image is available on cgr.dev:

docker pull cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/aws-otel-collector:latest

Be sure to replace the ORGANIZATION placeholder with the name used for your organization's private repository within the Chainguard Registry.

Compatibility Notes

The Chainguard aws-otel-collector image is designed to be a drop-in replacement for the upstream AWS OpenTelemetry Collector image.

Prerequisites

• Authenticated with AWS EKS cluster
• IAM role with permissions for the AWS services you plan to use

Below is an example using eksctl to create an IAM service account with the necessary permissions for CloudWatch and X-Ray integration:

kubectl create namespace otel-system
eksctl create iamserviceaccount \
    --name aws-otel-collector \
    --namespace otel-system \
    --cluster MY-CLUSTER-NAME \
    --region MY-AWS-REGION \
    --attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/CloudWatchAgentServerPolicy \
    --attach-policy-arn arn:aws:iam::aws:policy/AWSXRayDaemonWriteAccess \
    --approve

• For detailed IAM permission requirements, see the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry permissions documentation

Getting Started

Install with Helm

The recommended method for deploying the aws-otel-collector with the Chainguard image is using the official ADOT Helm chart. This example demonstrates deployment:

cat > values.yaml <<EOF
image:
  repository: cgr.dev/ORGANIZATION/aws-otel-collector
  tag: latest

clusterName: MY-CLUSTER-NAME

serviceAccount:
    create: false
    name: aws-otel-collector
EOF

Deploy the collector:

# Add the Helm repository
helm repo add snowplow-devops https://snowplow-devops.github.io/helm-charts
helm repo update

# Install the chart
helm install aws-otel-collector snowplow-devops/aws-otel-collector \
    --namespace otel-system \
    -f values.yaml

Once installation completes, validate aws-otel-collector is running:

kubectl get pods -n otel-system
kubectl get daemonset -n otel-system

The collector will automatically start collecting cluster metrics and sending them to CloudWatch Container Insights.

Install as an EKS Add-on

EKS allows you to install the ADOT collector as an EKS add-on. For complete instructions on how you can do this, refer to the ADOT EKS add-on documentation.

If you've chosen this installation method, be aware that you cannot specify a custom image while installing as an EKS add-on. You'll need to patch the aws-otel-collector DaemonSet to use the Chainguard image, and this is a step you'll need to repeat each time that you re-deploy or upgrade the version using EKS add-ons.

Documentation and Resources

• AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry Documentation
• Container Insights Setup Guide
• ADOT Collector Configuration Reference
• OpenTelemetry Collector Documentation

What are Chainguard Containers?

Chainguard Containers are minimal container images that are secure by default.

In many cases, the Chainguard Containers tagged as :latest contain only an open-source application and its runtime dependencies. These minimal container images typically do not contain a shell or package manager. Chainguard Containers are built with Wolfi, our Linux undistro designed to produce container images that meet the requirements of a more secure software supply chain.

The main features of Chainguard Containers include:

• Minimal design, without unnecessary software bloat
• Daily builds to ensure container images are up-to-date with available security patches
• High quality build-time SBOMs attesting to the provenance of all artifacts within the image
• Verifiable signatures provided by Sigstore
• Reproducible builds with Cosign and apko (read more about reproducibility)

For cases where you need container images with shells and package managers to build or debug, most Chainguard Containers come paired with a -dev variant.

Although the -dev container image variants have similar security features as their more minimal versions, they feature additional software that is typically not necessary in production environments. We recommend using multi-stage builds to leverage the -dev variants, copying application artifacts into a final minimal container that offers a reduced attack surface that won’t allow package installations or logins.

Learn More

To better understand how to work with Chainguard Containers, please visit Chainguard Academy and Chainguard Courses.

In addition to Containers, Chainguard offers VMs and Libraries. Contact Chainguard to access additional products.

Trademarks

This software listing is packaged by Chainguard. The trademarks set forth in this offering are owned by their respective companies, and use of them does not imply any affiliation, sponsorship, or endorsement by such companies.