Even though most observability solutions stay out of your way after deploying them, you will most likely still need to get your data to them somehow. Many projects recommend a so-called “Agent” or “Collector”. But what exactly is an agent, and why do I need one?

This talk covers the design decisions behind observability agents, the open protocols used by prominent examples, and the different ways they work together. On top, these agents also need to be deployed and configured. Container orchestration solutions simplify this a lot but provides their own challenges.

After this talk, you will be able to reason about different deployment architectures and know which methods of gathering observability data to choose for specific situations.