Monitor NGINX on Kubernetes with OpenTelemetry

Monitor your NGINX servers running in Kubernetes clusters using the OpenTelemetry Collector to send metrics and telemetry data to New Relic.

This Kubernetes-specific integration automatically discovers NGINX pods in your cluster and collects metrics without manual configuration for each instance. It leverages the OpenTelemetry nginxreceiver and receivercreator to dynamically monitor NGINX performance metrics, connection statistics, and server health across your containerized environment.

Before you begin

Ensure you have:

A New Relic account with a
Enable the HTTP stub status module on NGINX pod that needs to be monitored
Add labels app and role to each NGINX pod that needs to be monitored

Install and configure the OpenTelemetry Collector

Deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector to your Kubernetes cluster using Helm. The collector will automatically discover and scrape metrics from your NGINX pods.

Create a Kubernetes secret to store your New Relic credentials. Replace YOUR_LICENSE_KEY and YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT with your actual values. Refer to the OTLP endpoint configuration documentation to select the appropriate endpoint for your region.

bash

$kubectl create secret generic newrelic-licenses --from-literal=NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY=YOUR_LICENSE_KEY --from-literal=NEWRELIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT=YOUR_OTLP_ENDPOINT -n newrelic --create-namespace

Create a values.yaml file to configure the OpenTelemetry Collector. Update the placeholders for your cluster name, NGINX pod labels, stub status port and path.

opentelemetry-collector:
  mode: deployment

  image:
    repository: otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib
    pullPolicy: IfNotPresent

  command:
    name: otelcol-contrib

  resources:
    limits:
      cpu: 500m
      memory: 300Mi
    requests:
      cpu: 100m
      memory: 100Mi

  extraEnvs:
    - name: NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: newrelic-licenses
          key: NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY
    - name: NEWRELIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT
      valueFrom:
        secretKeyRef:
          name: newrelic-licenses
          key: NEWRELIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT
    - name: K8S_NODE_NAME
      valueFrom:
        fieldRef:
          fieldPath: spec.nodeName
    - name: K8S_CLUSTER_NAME
      value: nginx-cluster # Update with your cluster name

  clusterRole:
    create: true
    rules:
      - apiGroups: [""]
        resources: ["pods", "nodes", "nodes/stats", "nodes/proxy"]
        verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
      - apiGroups: ["apps"]
        resources: ["replicasets"]
        verbs: ["get", "list", "watch"]
    clusterRoleBinding:
      name: ""

  config:
    extensions:
      health_check:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:13133
      k8s_observer:
        auth_type: serviceAccount
        observe_pods: true
        observe_nodes: true

    receivers:
      receiver_creator/nginx:
        watch_observers: [k8s_observer]
        receivers:
          nginx:
            rule: type == "pod" && labels["app"] == "nginx" && labels["role"] == "reverse-proxy" # Update with your labels
            config:
              endpoint: 'http://`endpoint`:<stub_status_port>/status'
              metrics:
                nginx.requests:
                  enabled: true
                nginx.connections_accepted:
                  enabled: true
                nginx.connections_handled:
                  enabled: true
                nginx.connections_current:
                  enabled: true
              collection_interval: 30s
              resource_attributes:
                nginx.server.endpoint: 'http://`endpoint`:<stub_status_port>/status'
                nginx.port: '<stub_status_port>'

    processors:
      batch:
        send_batch_size: 1024
        timeout: 30s

      resource/cluster:
        attributes:
          - key: k8s.cluster.name
            value: "${env:K8S_CLUSTER_NAME}"
            action: insert

      transform/nginx:
        metric_statements:
          - context: resource
            statements:
              - set(attributes["nginx.display.name"], Concat([
                  "server",
                  "k8s",
                  attributes["k8s.cluster.name"],
                  attributes["k8s.namespace.name"],
                  "pod",
                  attributes["k8s.pod.name"],
                  "nginx",
                  attributes["nginx.port"]
                  ], ":"))
              - set(attributes["nginx.deployment.name"], attributes["k8s.pod.name"])

    exporters:
      otlphttp:
        endpoint: "${env:NEWRELIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT}"
        headers:
          api-key: "${env:NEWRELIC_LICENSE_KEY}"

    service:
      extensions: [health_check, k8s_observer]
      pipelines:
        metrics/nginx:
          receivers: [receiver_creator/nginx]
          processors: [batch, resource/cluster, transform/nginx]
          exporters: [otlphttp]

Install the Helm chart using your values.yaml file.

bash

$helm repo add open-telemetry https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts
$helm repo update
$helm upgrade --install nginx-otel-collector open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector --namespace newrelic --create-namespace -f values.yaml

Ensure the pods have successfully spun up:
bash
```
$kubectl get pods -n newrelic --watch
```
You should see pods with names like nginx-otel-collector-<hash> in a Running state in the newrelic namespace.

Run an NRQL query in New Relic to confirm data is arriving. Replace the cluster name with the value you set in the values file:

FROM Metric
SELECT *
WHERE metricName LIKE 'nginx.%'
  AND instrumentation.provider = 'opentelemetry'
  AND k8s.cluster.name = 'nginx-cluster'
SINCE 10 minutes ago

Find and use data

Go to one.newrelic.com > Integrations & Agents.
Select Dashboards, and click NGINX OTel overview dashboard.
In the popup window, select your account.
Click View dashboard, and see your NGINX data in New Relic.

The NGINX metrics are attached to the Metric event type. You can query this data for troubleshooting purposes or to create custom charts and dashboards.

Metrics and attributes reference

This integration collects the same core NGINX metrics as the on-host deployment, with additional Kubernetes-specific resource attributes for cluster, namespace, and pod identification.

For complete metrics and attributes reference: See NGINX OpenTelemetry metrics and attributes reference for detailed descriptions of all metrics, types, and resource attributes for Kubernetes deployments.

Next steps

Learn more about your data:

Find and query your NGINX data - Access dashboards, create custom queries, and set up alerts
NGINX OpenTelemetry metrics and attributes reference - Complete metrics reference with descriptions and examples
NGINX OpenTelemetry overview - Understand collected metrics, attributes, and use cases
NGINX receiver documentation - Technical details and advanced configuration

Explore related monitoring:

Monitor NGINX Plus with OpenTelemetry - For commercial NGINX Plus deployments
Monitor self-hosted NGINX with OpenTelemetry - For traditional server deployments
OpenTelemetry best practices - Optimize your OpenTelemetry setup

Kubernetes-specific resources:

OpenTelemetry Collector on Kubernetes - Advanced collector configurations

Monitor NGINX on Kubernetes with OpenTelemetry

Before you begin

Install and configure the OpenTelemetry Collector

Create Kubernetes secret for credentials

Create values.yaml configuration

Install with Helm

Verify deployment and data collection

Find and use data

Metrics and attributes reference

Next steps

Monitor NGINX on Kubernetes with OpenTelemetry

Before you begin .css-21sua1{background:none;border:none;width:0;padding:0;}

Install and configure the OpenTelemetry Collector

Create values.yaml configuration

Install with Helm

Verify deployment and data collection

Find and use data

Metrics and attributes reference

Next steps

Before you begin