How did data get into the OpenTelemetry collector and where did the collector send it?

Data in the OpenTelemetry collector (Collector) comes from applications via exporters, which use protocols such as OTLP (OpenTelemetry Protocol), Jaeger, Zipkin, and others. Typically, applications collect metrics, traces, and logs using the OpenTelemetry SDK and send them to the Collector.

The Collector receives data through receivers, such as OTLP receiver, Jaeger receiver, etc. It can then process, aggregate, filter, and transform the data.

After processing, the Collector sends data via exporters to monitoring and analysis backends, such as Prometheus, Jaeger, Zipkin, Elastic, or cloud services.

Example flow:

1. The application collects traces and metrics.
2. Sends them via the OTLP protocol to the Collector.
3. The Collector receives data through the OTLP receiver.
4. It processes and exports the data to a Jaeger backend for trace visualization.

Thus, the Collector acts as an intermediary service for collecting, processing, and transmitting telemetry.