The OpenTelemetry Collector provides an integration with JMX and Cassandra to ingest metrics. The Collector fetches Cassandra metrics from JMX. From there the metrics are processed and exported to Lightstep Observability.

To complete the integration, you will:

  • Configure the Cassandra receiver for the Collector
  • Enable the integration by adding it to a pipeline

Prerequisites

  • A running Cassandra instance
  • Download OpenTelemetry JMX Metric JAR release version 1.9 or later.
  • The path to the opentelemetry-jmx-metrics.jar file.
  • You’ve configured the Collector to export metric data to Lightstep Observability.

Cassandra JMX reporting

The Cassandra JMX receiver periodically fetches metrics using a built-in OpenTelemetry helper utilizing a Groovy script. The script is configured to poll both the JMX Agent and the OpenTelemetry JMX Metric Gatherer operation.

For more details regarding configuring the Cassandra remote connection, see the official Cassandra documentation.

Configure the Collector receiver

In the OpenTelemetry Collector configuration file, add JVM and Cassandra as a receiver and set the following:

  • jar_path: The path to the opentelemetry-jmx-metrics.jar file.
  • endpoint: The hostname/IP address and port or unix socket file path of the Cassandra instance
  • target_system: The metrics to collect. Valid values for this integration are jvm and cassandra
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receivers:
  jmx:
    jar_path: /opt/opentelemetry-jmx-metrics.jar
    endpoint: "localhost:9999"
    target_system: jvm,cassandra

The OpenTelemetry repo provides additional details about JMX configuration.

Enable the Collector receiver

Once the Cassandra receiver is configured, enable it by adding it to one or more pipelines as described in the Collector configuration documentation.

Validate metrics are reporting to Lightstep

You can validate that metrics are reporting to Lightstep on the Metrics details page in Project settings.

  1. In Lightstep, click Project settings > Metric details.

  2. Search for Cassandra metric names. Search for metric

  3. If needed, click on the metric to edit the description and how the units are displayed in Lightstep.

Create a dashboard for the metrics

Use the Lightstep Terraform Provider to create a dashboard for the metrics.