The official Splunk documentation for this page is Configure the Java agent. For instructions on how to contribute to the docs, see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Advanced configuration

The agent can be configured in the following ways:

• System property (example: -Dotel.resource.attributes=service.name=my-java-app)
• Environment variable (example: export OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=service.name=my-java-app)

System property values take priority over corresponding environment variables.

Below you will find all the configuration options supported by this distribution.

Splunk configuration

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
splunk.access.token	SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN	unset	Stable	(Optional) Auth token allowing exporters to communicate directly with the Splunk cloud, passed as X-SF-TOKEN header.
splunk.realm	SPLUNK_REALM	none	Stable	Specify your organization's realm name, such as us0 or `us1. When the realm is set, telemetry data is sent directly to the ingest endpoint of Splunk Observability Cloud, bypassing the Splunk Distribution of the OpenTelemetry Collector. If no realm is specified, telemetry is routed to a Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector deployed locally. This configuration applies only to metrics and traces.
splunk.metrics.force_full_commandline	SPLUNK_METRICS_FORCE_FULL_COMMANDLINE	false	Experimental	Adds the full command line as a resource attribute for all metrics. If false, commands longer than 255 characters are truncated.
splunk.trace-response-header.enabled	SPLUNK_TRACE_RESPONSE_HEADER_ENABLED	true	Stable	Enables adding server trace information to HTTP response headers. See this document for more information.

Trace exporters

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
otel.exporter.otlp.endpoint	OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT	http://localhost:4317	Stable	The OTLP endpoint to connect to. Setting this will override the splunk.realm property.
otel.traces.exporter	OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER	otlp	Stable	Select the traces exporter to use. We recommend using the default OTLP exporter (otlp)

The Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Java uses the OTLP traces exporter as the default setting.

Trace propagation configuration

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
otel.propagators	OTEL_PROPAGATORS	tracecontext,baggage	Stable	A comma-separated list of propagators that will be used. You can find the list of supported propagators here.

If you wish to be compatible with older versions of the Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Java (or the SignalFx Tracing Java Agent) you can set the trace propagator to B3:

export OTEL_PROPAGATORS=b3multi

Trace configuration

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
otel.instrumentation.common.peer-service-mapping	OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_COMMON_PEER_SERVICE_MAPPING	unset	Stable	Used to add a peer.service attribute by specifying a comma separated list of mapping from hostnames or IP addresses. Example If set to 1.2.3.4=cats-service,dogs-service.serverlessapis.com=dogs-api, requests to 1.2.3.4 will have a peer.service attribute of cats-service and requests to dogs-service.serverlessapis.com will have one of dogs-api.
otel.instrumentation.methods.include	OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_METHODS_INCLUDE	unset	Stable	Same as adding @WithSpan annotation functionality for the target method string. Format my.package.MyClass1[method1,method2];my.package.MyClass2[method3]
otel.instrumentation.opentelemetry-annotations.exclude-methods	OTEL_INSTRUMENTATION_OPENTELEMETRY_ANNOTATIONS_EXCLUDE_METHODS	unset	Stable	Suppress @WithSpan instrumentation for specific methods. Format my.package.MyClass1[method1,method2];my.package.MyClass2[method3]
otel.resource.attributes	OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES	unset	Stable	Comma-separated list of resource attributes added to every reported span. Example key1=val1,key2=val2
otel.service.name	OTEL_SERVICE_NAME	unset	Stable	Sets the value of the service.name resource attribute. If service.name is also set in otel.resource.attributes, this setting takes precedence.
otel.span.attribute.count.limit	OTEL_SPAN_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT	unlimited	Stable	Maximum number of attributes per span.
otel.span.event.count.limit	OTEL_SPAN_EVENT_COUNT_LIMIT	unlimited	Stable	Maximum number of events per span.
otel.span.link.count.limit	OTEL_SPAN_LINK_COUNT_LIMIT	1000	Stable	Maximum number of links per span.

Sampling configuration

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
otel.traces.sampler	OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER	always_on	Stable	The sampler to use for tracing.

Splunk Distribution of OpenTelemetry Java supports all standard samplers as provided by OpenTelemetry Java SDK Autoconfigure. In addition, the distribution adds the following samplers:

internal_root_off

Setting otel.traces.sampler to internal_root_off drops all traces with root spans where spanKind is INTERNAL, CLIENT or PRODUCER. This setting only keeps root spans where spanKind is SERVER and CONSUMER.

rules

This sampler allows to ignore individual endpoints and drop all traces that originate from them. It applies only to spans with SERVER kind.

For example, the following configuration results in all requests to /healthcheck to be excluded from monitoring:

export OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER=rules
export OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG=drop=/healthcheck;fallback=parentbased_always_on

All requests to downstream services that happen as a consequence of calling an excluded endpoint are also excluded.

The value of OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG is interpreted as a semicolon-separated list of rules. The following types of rules are supported:

• drop=<value>: The sampler drops a span if its url.path attribute has a substring equal to the provided value. You can provide as many drop rules as you want.
• fallback=sampler: Fallback sampler used if no drop rule matched a given span. Supported fallback samplers are always_on and parentbased_always_on. Probability samplers such as traceidratio are not supported.

If several fallback rules are provided, only the last one will be in effect.

If OTEL_TRACES_SAMPLER_ARG is not provided or has en empty value, no drop rules are configured and parentbased_always_on sampler is as default.

Java agent configuration

System property	Environment variable	Default value	Support	Description
otel.javaagent.enabled	OTEL_JAVAAGENT_ENABLED	true	Stable	Globally enables javaagent auto-instrumentation.

Profiler settings

Setting	Default	Description
splunk.profiler.enabled	false	set to true to enable the profiler
splunk.profiler.directory	system temp directory	location of JFR files, defaults to System.getProperty("java.io.tmpdir")
splunk.profiler.recording.duration	20s	recording unit duration
splunk.profiler.keep-files	false	leave JFR files on disk if true
splunk.profiler.logs-endpoint	http://localhost:4318/v1/logs	where to send OTLP logs, defaults to otel.exporter.otlp.endpoint
splunk.profiler.call.stack.interval	10000ms	how often to sample call stacks
splunk.profiler.memory.enabled	false	set to true to enable all other memory profiling options unless explicitly disabled. Setting to true enables metrics.
splunk.profiler.memory.event.rate	150/s	allocation event rate
splunk.profiler.include.internal.stacks	false	set to true to include stack traces of agent internal threads and stack traces with only JDK internal frames
splunk.profiler.tracing.stacks.only	false	set to true to include only stack traces that are linked to a span context
splunk.profiler.otlp.protocol	http/protobuf	The transport protocol to use on profiling OTLP log requests. Options include grpc and http/protobuf.

If the splunk.profiler.enabled option is not enabled, all profiling features are disabled. For example, setting splunk.profiler.memory.enabled to true has no effect if splunk.profiler.enabled is set to false. Similarly, there is no separate toggle for periodic collection of call stacks (thread dumps), as this feature is enabled only when the profiler is enabled.

Note: Setting splunk.profiler.memory.enabled to true automatically activates the splunk metrics.

Other OpenTelemetry Java agent configuration

You can find all other Java agent configuration options described here.