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OTEL-065: sending_queue without persistent storage

Severity: warn (advisory)

Rule Details​

With sending_queue enabled but no storage extension wired in, the queue lives entirely in RAM. Every restart — rolling deploy, OOM, node reschedule, cgroup kill — drops every batch that had not yet been exported. For any pipeline that carries transactional or billing-grade data, back the queue with the file_storage extension so unsent batches survive a restart.

This rule fires when an exporter has sending_queue.enabled != false and no sending_queue.storage configured.

Options​

This rule has no options.

Examples​

Avoid
exporters:
  otlp/backend:
    endpoint: backend:4317
    sending_queue:
      enabled: true
      queue_size: 5000
      # no storage
Prefer
extensions:
  file_storage/queue:
    directory: /var/lib/otelcol/queue

exporters:
  otlp/backend:
    endpoint: backend:4317
    sending_queue:
      enabled: true
      queue_size: 5000
      storage: file_storage/queue

service:
  extensions: [file_storage/queue]

When Not To Use It​

Short-lived non-durable telemetry (local debug runs, ephemeral CI pipelines) where losing data on restart is acceptable.

  • OTEL-017 — exporter missing retry_on_failure/sending_queue
  • OTEL-048 — sending_queue explicitly disabled
  • OTEL-050 — sending_queue.queue_size above 50000
  • OTEL-066 — sending_queue.storage references undefined extension

Version​

Available since augur v0.1.0.

Further Reading​

Resources​