No Collector

The most direct deployment pattern doesn’t use a Collector at all. In this approach, applications instrumented with an OpenTelemetry SDK export telemetry signals (traces, metrics, and logs) straight to a backend:

Example

See the instrumentation documentation for end-to-end examples that show how to export signals directly from your application to a backend.

Trade-offs

Here are the key pros and cons of skipping the Collector:

Pros:

• Straightforward to use, especially in development and test environments
• No additional moving parts to deploy or operate

Cons:

• Requires code changes if collection, processing, or ingestion needs change
• Strong coupling between application code and backend storage or visualization
• Each language implementation supports only a limited number of exporters