Status: Mixed
The goal of this specification is to unify the environment variable names between different OpenTelemetry SDK implementations. SDKs MAY choose to allow configuration via the environment variables in this specification, but are not required to. If they do, they SHOULD use the names listed in this document.
Status: Stable
If an SDK chooses to support an integer-valued environment variable, it SHOULD support nonnegative values between 0 and 2³¹ − 1 (inclusive). Individual SDKs MAY choose to support a larger range of values.
For variables which accept a known value out of a set, i.e., an enum value, SDK implementations MAY support additional values not listed here. For variables accepting an enum value, if the user provides a value the SDK does not recognize, the SDK MUST generate a warning and gracefully ignore the setting.
Any value that represents a duration, for example a timeout, MUST be an integer representing a number of milliseconds. The value is non-negative - if a negative value is provided, the SDK MUST generate a warning, gracefully ignore the setting and use the default value if it is defined.
For example, the value 12000
indicates 12000 milliseconds, i.e., 12 seconds.
Status: Stable
Name | Description | Default | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES | Key-value pairs to be used as resource attributes | See Resource SDK for more details. | |
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME | Sets the value of the service.name resource attribute |
If service.name is also provided in OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES , then OTEL_SERVICE_NAME takes precedence. |
|
OTEL_LOG_LEVEL | Log level used by the SDK logger | "info" | |
OTEL_PROPAGATORS | Propagators to be used as a comma-separated list | "tracecontext,baggage" | Values MUST be deduplicated in order to register a Propagator only once. |
OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER | Sampler to be used for traces | "parentbased_always_on" | See Sampling |
OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG | String value to be used as the sampler argument | The specified value will only be used if OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER is set. Each Sampler type defines its own expected input, if any. Invalid or unrecognized input MUST be logged and MUST be otherwise ignored, i.e. the SDK MUST behave as if OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG is not set. |
Known values for OTEL_PROPAGATORS are:
"tracecontext"
: W3C Trace Context"baggage"
: W3C Baggage"b3"
: B3 Single"b3multi"
: B3 Multi"jaeger"
: Jaeger"xray"
: AWS X-Ray (third party)"ottrace"
: OT Trace (third party)
Known values for OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER
are:
"always_on"
:AlwaysOnSampler
"always_off"
:AlwaysOffSampler
"traceidratio"
:TraceIdRatioBased
"parentbased_always_on"
:ParentBased(root=AlwaysOnSampler)
"parentbased_always_off"
:ParentBased(root=AlwaysOffSampler)
"parentbased_traceidratio"
:ParentBased(root=TraceIdRatioBased)
"jaeger_remote"
:JaegerRemoteSampler
"xray"
: AWS X-Ray Centralized Sampling (third party)
Depending on the value of OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER
, OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG
may be set as follows:
- For
traceidratio
andparentbased_traceidratio
samplers: Sampling probability, a number in the [0..1] range, e.g. "0.25". Default is 1.0 if unset. - For
jaeger_remote
: The value is a comma separated list:endpoint
: the endpoint in form ofhost:port
of gRPC server that serves the sampling strategy for the service (sampling.proto).pollingIntervalMs
: in milliseconds indicating how often the sampler will poll the backend for updates to sampling strategy.initialSamplingRate
: in the [0..1] range, which is used as the sampling probability when the backend cannot be reached to retrieve a sampling strategy. This value stops having an effect once a sampling strategy is retrieved successfully, as the remote strategy will be used until a new update is retrieved.- Example:
endpoint=localhost:14250,pollingIntervalMs=5000,initialSamplingRate=0.25
Status: Stable
Name | Description | Default | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
OTEL_BSP_SCHEDULE_DELAY | Delay interval between two consecutive exports | 5000 | |
OTEL_BSP_EXPORT_TIMEOUT | Maximum allowed time to export data | 30000 | |
OTEL_BSP_MAX_QUEUE_SIZE | Maximum queue size | 2048 | |
OTEL_BSP_MAX_EXPORT_BATCH_SIZE | Maximum batch size | 512 | Must be less than or equal to OTEL_BSP_MAX_QUEUE_SIZE |
SDKs SHOULD only offer environment variables for the types of attributes, for which that SDK implements truncation mechanism.
See the SDK Attribute Limits section for the definition of the limits.
Name | Description | Default | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
OTEL_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_LENGTH_LIMIT | Maximum allowed attribute value size | Empty value is treated as infinity. Non-integer and negative values are invalid. | |
OTEL_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed span attribute count | 128 |
Status: Stable
See the SDK Span Limits section for the definition of the limits.
Name | Description | Default | Notes |
---|---|---|---|
OTEL_SPAN_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_LENGTH_LIMIT | Maximum allowed attribute value size | Empty value is treated as infinity. Non-integer and negative values are invalid. | |
OTEL_SPAN_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed span attribute count | 128 | |
OTEL_SPAN_EVENT_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed span event count | 128 | |
OTEL_SPAN_LINK_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed span link count | 128 | |
OTEL_EVENT_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed attribute per span event count | 128 | |
OTEL_LINK_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT | Maximum allowed attribute per span link count | 128 |
See OpenTelemetry Protocol Exporter Configuration Options.
Status: Stable
Name | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_AGENT_HOST | Hostname for the Jaeger agent | "localhost" |
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_AGENT_PORT | Port for the Jaeger agent | 6832 |
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_ENDPOINT | HTTP endpoint for Jaeger traces | "http://localhost:14250" |
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_TIMEOUT | Maximum time the Jaeger exporter will wait for each batch export | 10s |
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_USER | Username to be used for HTTP basic authentication | - |
OTEL_EXPORTER_JAEGER_PASSWORD | Password to be used for HTTP basic authentication | - |
Status: Stable
Name | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
OTEL_EXPORTER_ZIPKIN_ENDPOINT | Endpoint for Zipkin traces | "http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans" |
OTEL_EXPORTER_ZIPKIN_TIMEOUT | Maximum time the Zipkin exporter will wait for each batch export | 10s |
Addtionally, the following environment variables are reserved for future usage in Zipkin Exporter configuration:
OTEL_EXPORTER_ZIPKIN_PROTOCOL
This will be used to specify whether or not the exporter uses v1 or v2, json, thrift or protobuf. As of 1.0 of the specification, there is no specified default, or configuration via environment variables.
Status: Experimental
Name | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
OTEL_EXPORTER_PROMETHEUS_HOST | Host used by the Prometheus exporter | All addresses: "0.0.0.0" |
OTEL_EXPORTER_PROMETHEUS_PORT | Port used by the Prometheus exporter | 9464 |
Status: Stable
We define environment variables for setting one or more exporters per signal.
Name | Description | Default |
---|---|---|
OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER | Trace exporter to be used | "otlp" |
OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER | Metrics exporter to be used | "otlp" |
The SDK MAY accept a comma-separated list to enable setting multiple exporters.
Known values for OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER are:
"otlp"
: OTLP"jaeger"
: Jaeger gRPC"zipkin"
: Zipkin (Defaults to protobuf format)"none"
: No automatically configured exporter for traces.
Known values for OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER are:
"otlp"
: OTLP"prometheus"
: Prometheus"none"
: No automatically configured exporter for metrics.
To ensure consistent naming across projects, this specification recommends that language specific environment variables are formed using the following convention:
OTEL_{LANGUAGE}_{FEATURE}