Docs feedback: Review guidance for sending OTel to Grafana

[ptodev]

URL

https://grafana.com/docs/alloy/latest/collect/opentelemetry-to-lgtm-stack/

Feedback

We currently have a Collect OpenTelemetry data and forward to Grafana doc, which advises users to translate their telemetry to Loki-native and Prometheus-native formats prior to sending it to Grafana Cloud. Now that Grafana Cloud has OTLP endpoints which are Generally Available, there is no need to do these translations. In fact, it's not even recommended to do the translations anymore since the way they are done in the cloud gateway might be different from the way it's done in Alloy.

We could do a few things:

• Delete the Collect OpenTelemetry data and forward to Grafana page.
• Update the Collect OpenTelemetry data doc to mention some more things:
  • That Grafana Cloud has OTLP endpoints and users could send OTLP to them directly.
  • It's possible to translate data between OTLP and Prometheus, and between OTLP and Loki. Users are free to do so whenever they like, but their experience with Grafana Cloud might be best if they avoid doing translations. That way the original data will be preserved as much as possible, and Grafana Cloud will have a chance to translate the telemetry in the best way. E.g. it might use structured metadata when converting OTLP resource attributes in logs.

cc @cyrille-leclerc

[cyrille-leclerc]

Looks great. One minor comment

That Grafana Cloud has OTLP endpoints and users could send OTLP to them directly.

We have consensus to call it the "Grafana Cloud OTLP Endpoint", singular

[derek-cadzow]

@Clayton, FYI for visibility.

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[cyrille-leclerc]

FYI the following docs update will improve the guidance for sending OTLP to Grafana:

• https://github.com/grafana/website/pull/21511