Integrate Kubernetes Events as OTLP Logs

Overview

Category
Signal types	logs
Backend type	custom in-cluster, third-party remote
OTLP-native	yes

Learn how to collect Kubernetes cluster events and forward them as OTLP logs to your observability backend. You install and configure a custom OTel Collector in your Kyma cluster using a provided Helm chart. The collector watches for Kubernetes events, converts them to OTLP logs, and forwards them to the Telemetry module's log gateway for further processing and enrichment.

Note This guide uses the OpenTelemetry k8s-events receiver. It is the recommended, modern receiver for this task because it provides a dedicated attribute scheme optimized for Kubernetes events.

Table of Content

• Prerequisites
• Prepare the Environment
• Install the Collector
• Verify the Installation
• Integrate with SAP Cloud Logging (Optional)
• Clean Up

Prerequisites

• Kyma as the target deployment environment
• The Telemetry module is added
• You have set up a LogPipeline to send logs to a backend, for example, by following the SAP CLoud Logging guide or Loki
• Kubectl version that is within one minor version (older or newer) of kube-apiserver
• Helm 3.x

Prepare the Environment

1. Export your namespace as a variable:

   export K8S_NAMESPACE="k8s-events"

2. If you haven't created a namespace yet, do it now:

   kubectl create namespace $K8S_NAMESPACE

3. Set the following label to enable Istio injection in your namespace:

   kubectl label namespace $K8S_NAMESPACE istio-injection=enabled

4. Export the Helm release name. The release name must be unique within the namespace. All resources in the cluster will be prefixed with this name.

   export HELM_RELEASE="k8s-events"

5. Update your Helm installation with the required Helm repository:

   helm repo add open-telemetry https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts
   helm repo update

Install the Collector

Run the Helm upgrade command to deploy the collector. It installs the chart only if it is not present yet.

helm upgrade --install --create-namespace -n $K8S_NAMESPACE $HELM_RELEASE open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/kyma-project/telemetry-manager/main/docs/user/integration/k8s-events/values.yaml

The command uses the values.yaml file that customizes the default chart settings:

• Configures the deployment mode and the image to use
• Configure the log pipeline with the k8s-events receiver and an OTLP exporter shipping to the Kyma-specific endpoint
• Setup required RBAC and resource settings

Alternatively, you can create your own values.yaml file and adjust the command.

Verify the Installation

To verify that the collector is running properly, set up port forwarding and call the respective local hosts.

1. Verify the collector starts up:

   kubectl -n $K8S_NAMESPACE get pods

2. Verify that logs arrive at your observability backend. The event logs contain the attribute instrumentationScope.name: github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/receiver/k8seventsreceiver.

Integrate with SAP Cloud Logging (Optional)

If your LogPipeline is configured with a SAP Cloud Logging instance (see Integrate with SAP Cloud Logging, you can install a custom Search and Dashboard called K8S Events to explore the data. For that, import the file cloud-logging-dashboard.ndjson.

Clean Up

To remove your custom OTel Collector and all its resources from the cluster, run the following Helm command:

helm delete -n $K8S_NAMESPACE $HELM_RELEASE