Quickstart for Kubernetes on Elastic Cloud Hosted

Learn how to set up the Elastic Agent and EDOT SDKs in a Kubernetes environment with Elastic Cloud Hosted (ECH) to collect host metrics, logs, and application traces. This quickstart uses the Elastic Cloud Managed OTLP Endpoint, which is the recommended ingestion path for ECH.

Prerequisites

An Elastic Cloud Hosted deployment running version 9.0 or later.
Helm version 3.9+ up to and including 4.3.0.

Guided setup

The fastest way to get started is the Add data screen in Elastic Observability. It generates install commands with your endpoint and API key already included.

Open Elastic Observability.
Go to Add data.
Select what you want to monitor.
Follow the instructions.

If you need to manage credentials manually, for example, to use them in automation or to configure multiple environments, follow the steps in the Manual installation section.

Manual installation

Follow these steps to deploy the Elastic Agent and EDOT SDKs in Kubernetes with ECH:

Add the repository to Helm

Run the following command to add the charts repository to Helm:

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

Find your endpoint and create an API key

Find your endpoint

The easiest way to get your endpoint and API key is from the Add data screen in Kibana:
1. Go to Add data.
2. In the Connect directly to the endpoint section, select the OpenTelemetry tab.
3. Copy the Endpoint value.
4. Click Create key to generate an API key with the required privileges.
Alternatively, retrieve the endpoint from the Elastic Cloud Console and create an API key manually:
1. Log in to the Elastic Cloud Console.
2. Find your deployment in Hosted deployments, and select Manage.
3. Under Application endpoints, cluster and component IDs, select Managed OTLP.
4. Copy the Direct endpoint value from the flyout.
Create an API key

Note

The Elastic Cloud Managed OTLP Endpoint validates API keys using APM application privileges. Index-level privilege scoping is not yet supported, meaning that API keys with custom index-level role descriptors return a PermissionDenied error.
Using Kibana
1. Go to Stack Management → API keys.
2. Click Create API key, enter a name, and enable Control security privileges.
3. In the role descriptors box, enter the following privileges:
  JSON
  
  { "otlp_writer": { "applications": [ { "application": "apm", "resources": ["*"], "privileges": ["event:write"] } ] } }
4. Click Create API key and copy the encoded value.
Using the Elasticsearch API
Use the Create API key API:
JSON
```
POST /_security/api_key
{
  "name": "otlp-writer",
  "role_descriptors": {
    "otlp_writer": {
      "applications": [
        {
          "application": "apm",
          "resources": ["*"],
          "privileges": ["event:write"]
        }
      ]
    }
  }
}
```
The event:write privilege for the apm application is the minimum required to send data through the Elastic Cloud Managed OTLP Endpoint.
Configure your credentials

Replace <ELASTIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT> and <ELASTIC_API_KEY> in the following command to create a namespace and a secret with your credentials.
Shell
```
kubectl create namespace opentelemetry-operator-system
kubectl create secret generic elastic-secret-otel \
--namespace opentelemetry-operator-system \
--from-literal=elastic_otlp_endpoint='<ELASTIC_OTLP_ENDPOINT>' \
--from-literal=elastic_api_key='<ELASTIC_API_KEY>'
```
Note

On Windows PowerShell, replace backslashes (\) with backticks (`) for line continuation and single quotes (') with double quotes (").
Install the Operator

Install the OpenTelemetry Operator using the kube-stack Helm chart with the managed_otlp values file:
Shell
```
helm install opentelemetry-kube-stack open-telemetry/opentelemetry-kube-stack \
--namespace opentelemetry-operator-system \
--values 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/elastic-agent/refs/tags/v9.5.6/deploy/helm/edot-collector/kube-stack/managed_otlp/values.yaml' \
--version '0.16.0'
```
The Operator provides a deployment of the Elastic Agent and configuration environment variables. This allows SDKs and instrumentation to send data to the Elastic Agent without further configuration.

For details about the pipelines, refer to Managed OTLP Endpoint.

Deploy on OpenShift
Elastic Agent 9.5+
Elastic Agent can run in OpenTelemetry mode to retrieve traces, metrics, and logs from your infrastructure and applications, and forward them to Elastic Observability.

Availability
- Generally available since 9.5
  
  This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage.
This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes.
On OpenShift, follow the manual installation instructions and use the following command to apply the OpenShift values file after the managed_otlp values file:
Shell
```
helm install opentelemetry-kube-stack open-telemetry/opentelemetry-kube-stack \
--namespace opentelemetry-operator-system \
--values 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/elastic-agent/refs/tags/v9.5.6/deploy/helm/edot-collector/kube-stack/managed_otlp/values.yaml' \
--values 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/elastic-agent/refs/tags/v9.5.6/deploy/helm/edot-collector/kube-stack/openshift/values.yaml' \
--version '0.16.0'
```
The OpenShift values file configures the chart to run with least privilege, including a custom security context constraints (SCC) resource for the daemon collector. For details, refer to Deploy on OpenShift.
Auto-instrument applications

Add a language-specific annotation to your namespace by replacing <LANGUAGE> with one of the supported values (nodejs, java, python, dotnet, or go) in the following command.
Shell
```
kubectl annotate namespace YOUR_NAMESPACE instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-<LANGUAGE>="opentelemetry-operator-system/elastic-instrumentation"
```
The OpenTelemetry Operator automatically provides the OTLP endpoint configuration and authentication to the SDKs through environment variables. Restart your deployment to ensure the annotations and auto-instrumentations are applied.

For languages where auto-instrumentation is not available, manually instrument your application. See the Setup section in the corresponding SDK.
Install the content packs

Install the Kubernetes OpenTelemetry Assets and System OpenTelemetry Assets integrations in Kibana.
Explore your data

Go to Kibana and select Dashboards to explore your newly collected data.

Using the `elasticsearch` exporter

If you need to write telemetry directly to Elasticsearch (for example, for pipeline customizations not yet supported through Elastic Cloud Managed OTLP Endpoint), use the following configuration instead.

Create the secret with your Elasticsearch endpoint:

kubectl create namespace opentelemetry-operator-system
kubectl create secret generic elastic-secret-otel \
--namespace opentelemetry-operator-system \
--from-literal=elastic_endpoint='<ELASTICSEARCH_ENDPOINT>' \
--from-literal=elastic_api_key='<ELASTIC_API_KEY>'

Install the Operator using the standard values file:

helm install opentelemetry-kube-stack open-telemetry/opentelemetry-kube-stack \
--namespace opentelemetry-operator-system \
--values 'https://raw.githubusercontent.com/elastic/elastic-agent/refs/tags/v9.5.6/deploy/helm/edot-collector/kube-stack/values.yaml' \
--version '0.16.0'

Elastic Agent can run in OpenTelemetry mode to retrieve traces, metrics, and logs from your infrastructure and applications, and forward them to Elastic Observability. Availability Generally available since 9.5 This functionality is generally available and ready for production usage. This documentation corresponds to the latest patch available for each minor version. If you're not using the latest patch, check the release notes for changes. On OpenShift, add the OpenShift values file after the base values file. Refer to Deploy on OpenShift.

For details about the pipelines, refer to Direct ingestion into Elasticsearch.

Troubleshooting

The following issues might occur.

API key prefix not found

The following error is due to an improperly formatted API key, and typically occurs when credentials are configured manually:

Exporting failed. Dropping data.
{"kind": "exporter", "data_type": }
"Unauthenticated desc = ApiKey prefix not found"

For a Collector, format the header as "Authorization": "ApiKey <api-key>". For an SDK, format it as "Authorization=ApiKey <api-key>".

For additional troubleshooting, refer to Troubleshooting common issues with the Elastic Agent and Troubleshooting the EDOT SDKs.