The OTel Collector Routing Pattern

Different telemetry to different vendors. The routing pattern, the rules, and the audit trail.

The idea

One collector, many exporters. Rules pick which telemetry goes to which exporter.

Logs to Loki; metrics to Prometheus; traces to Honeycomb. Each by team or service.

Routing rules

By service tag, by environment, by customer tier.

Rules are config; reviewed and tested like any other config.

Audit

Per-rule: how much telemetry does it route. Surfaces dead rules.

Quarterly cleanup. Rules accumulate; pruning is required.