NGINX OpenTelemetry metrics and attributes reference

This reference covers all metrics and attributes collected by the OpenTelemetry NGINX receiver, applicable to both on-host and Kubernetes deployments.

Core NGINX metrics

The OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib's nginxreceiver collects the following metrics from the NGINX stub status module:

Metric	Description	Type
`nginx.connections_accepted`	The total number of accepted client connections. Use this to track connection acceptance rates over time.	Sum
`nginx.connections_handled`	The total number of handled connections. Generally, the parameter value is the same as nginx.connections_accepted unless some resource limits have been reached (for example, the worker_connections limit). A gap between accepted and handled suggests resource constraints.	Sum
`nginx.connections_current`	The current number of nginx connections by state. States include: active (total active connections), reading (reading request headers), writing (writing responses), waiting (keep-alive connections waiting for next request).	Sum
`nginx.requests`	Total number of requests made to the server since it started. Use rate calculations to derive requests per second for performance monitoring.	Sum

Capacity planning tips:

High waiting connections may indicate keep-alive tuning opportunities
Gap between accepted and handled connections suggests resource constraints
Request-to-connection ratios help optimize worker configurations

Resource attributes

Resource attributes provide context about your NGINX deployment and vary depending on whether you're using on-host or Kubernetes deployment.

Common attributes

Attribute	Description	Example Values
`state`	The state of a connection (applicable to `nginx.connections_current` metric)	`active`, `reading`, `writing`, `waiting`
`nginx.server.endpoint`	The NGINX stub status endpoint URL	`http://localhost:8080/stub_status`

On-host deployment attributes

Attribute	Description	Example Values
`nginx.deployment.name`	A unique name to identify this NGINX deployment	`production-web-01`, `staging-api`
`nginx.display.name`	A display-friendly name combining "server" prefix with deployment name	`server:production-web-01`
`host.name`	The hostname of the system where NGINX is running	`web-server-01.example.com`
`host.id`	The unique identifier of the host system	`i-1234567890abcdef0`
`logtype`	The type of log being collected (applicable to logs only). Used by New Relic's built-in parsing rules. This attribute is only available when log forwarding is enabled.	`nginx` (for access logs), `nginx-error` (for error logs)

Kubernetes deployment attributes

Attribute	Description	Example Values
`k8s.cluster.name`	The name of the Kubernetes cluster	`nginx-cluster`, `production-k8s`
`k8s.namespace.name`	The Kubernetes namespace where the NGINX pod is running	`default`, `web-services`, `production`
`k8s.pod.name`	The name of the Kubernetes pod running NGINX	`nginx-deployment-7d4b8c6f9-x5z8w`
`nginx.deployment.name`	Set to the pod name for Kubernetes deployments	`nginx-deployment-7d4b8c6f9-x5z8w`
`nginx.display.name`	A comprehensive display name including cluster, namespace, and pod information	`server:k8s:nginx-cluster:default:pod:nginx-deployment-7d4b8c6f9-x5z8w:nginx:8080`

Metric collection details

Collection frequency

Default interval: 30 seconds
Configurable: Can be adjusted in the OpenTelemetry Collector configuration

Data source

All metrics are collected from the NGINX stub_status module, which must be enabled and configured to expose an HTTP endpoint.

Metric types

Sum metrics: Cumulative values that represent totals over time
Rate calculations: Use New Relic's rate() function to convert cumulative metrics to per-second rates for monitoring

Setup guides:

Monitor NGINX on self-hosted environments - Complete setup for on-host deployments
Monitor NGINX on Kubernetes - Complete setup for Kubernetes deployments

Data usage:

Find and query your NGINX data - Dashboards, NRQL queries, and alerts

Technical reference:

NGINX receiver documentation - OpenTelemetry technical details