Deploying the Agent
Middleware supports many forms of ingestion, the main form being a Host Agent. You may also send Middleware from a Serverless service, such as Lambda, or from a custom collection script using one of the Ingestion APIs.
- Middleware Host Agent: the Host Agent primarily collects system level metrics and logs, while also acting as a passthrough for all application level information.
- Serverless: Beyond native support for Lambda, Middleware supports back-end languages sending data directly, by-passing the agent.
- Ingestion APIs: Middleware provides two endpoints that can be used for the ingestion of custom metrics or logs.
OTel Collector
If you're a strong OTel shop you can add Middleware as an exporter to send directly to from your existing collectors. All of Middleware's features will work out of the box, no changes necessary.
See instructions on how to do so in our OTel Collector Contrib doc.
3rd party agents
Middleware supports major 3rd party Agents and Collectors, e.g. Datadog, Prometheus, and Logstash. Doing so reduces the cost of switching to and from other vendors.
Using a 3rd party agent will save you time upfront, but ultimately you'll want to switch to our Agents and SDKs for the full value of Middleware.
If you are using the OTel Collector or one of the 3rd Party Agents you may skip the rest of this getting started guide section.
Next Steps
Choose what type of agent you want to deploy.
