SigNoz

Do NOT trigger this skill for:

• General observability concepts without SigNoz context (use the observability skill)
• OpenTelemetry instrumentation not targeting SigNoz as the backend

Setup & authentication

SigNoz Cloud

Sign up at https://signoz.io/teams/ to get a cloud instance. You will receive:

• A region endpoint (e.g. ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443)
• A SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY for authenticating data

Self-hosted deployment

# Docker Standalone (quickest for local/dev)
git clone -b main https://github.com/SigNoz/signoz.git && cd signoz/deploy/
docker compose -f docker/clickhouse-setup/docker-compose.yaml up -d

# Kubernetes via Helm
helm repo add signoz https://charts.signoz.io
helm install my-release signoz/signoz

Self-hosted supports Docker Standalone, Docker Swarm, Kubernetes (AWS/GCP/Azure/ DigitalOcean/OpenShift), and native Linux installation.

Environment variables

# For cloud - set these in your OTel Collector or SDK exporter config
SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY=your-ingestion-key
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.<region>.signoz.cloud:443
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<your-ingestion-key>

Core concepts

SigNoz uses OpenTelemetry as its sole data ingestion layer. All telemetry (traces, metrics, logs) flows through an OTel Collector which receives data via OTLP (gRPC on port 4317, HTTP on 4318), processes it with batching and resource detection, and exports it to SigNoz's ClickHouse storage backend.

The data model has three pillars:

• Traces - Distributed request flows visualized as flamegraphs and Gantt charts. Each trace contains spans with attributes, events, and status codes.
• Metrics - Time-series data from application instrumentation (p99 latency, error rates, Apdex) and infrastructure (CPU, memory, disk, network via hostmetrics receiver).
• Logs - Structured log records ingested via OTel SDKs, FluentBit, Logstash, or file-based collection. Processed through log pipelines for parsing and enrichment.

All three signals correlate - traces link to logs via trace IDs, and exceptions embed in spans. The Query Builder provides a unified interface for filtering, aggregating, and visualizing across all signal types.

Common tasks

Instrument a Node.js app

npm install @opentelemetry/api \
  @opentelemetry/sdk-node \
  @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node \
  @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc

const { NodeSDK } = require("@opentelemetry/sdk-node");
const { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } = require("@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node");
const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require("@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc");

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({
    url: process.env.OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT || "http://localhost:4317",
  }),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()],
});

sdk.start();

Supported languages: Java, Python, Go, .NET, Ruby, PHP, Rust, Elixir, C++, Deno, Swift, plus mobile (React Native, Android, iOS, Flutter) and frontend.

Configure the OTel Collector for SigNoz