Monitor RabbitMQ with OpenTelemetry

Osuite monitors RabbitMQ through the OpenTelemetry Collector’s rabbitmq receiver, which reads the Management Plugin’s HTTP API and exports per-queue metrics over OTLP. Message backlogs and consumer counts arrive with the same resource attributes as your services, so a stalled worker in APM lines up with the queue it drains.

Note

The rabbitmq receiver ships in the Collector contrib distribution. Use otelcol-contrib (or any build that includes it), not the core otelcol binary.

Setup

Prerequisites

• A reachable RabbitMQ node with the Management Plugin enabled (the receiver scrapes its HTTP API on port 15672).
• A user with at least monitoring-level permissions.

Enable the plugin and create a monitoring user:

rabbitmq-plugins enable rabbitmq_management
rabbitmqctl add_user otel a-strong-password
rabbitmqctl set_user_tags otel monitoring
rabbitmqctl set_permissions -p / otel "" "" ".*"

Export the password to the Collector’s environment:

export RABBITMQ_PASSWORD='a-strong-password'

Configure the Collector

1. Add the rabbitmq receiver, the otlp/osuite exporter, and a metrics pipeline. Pick the tab that matches where your Collector runs — only the receiver endpoint changes.

   Bare host

   receivers:
     rabbitmq:
       endpoint: http://localhost:15672
       username: otel
       password: ${env:RABBITMQ_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [rabbitmq]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

   Docker

   receivers:
     rabbitmq:
       endpoint: http://rabbitmq:15672
       username: otel
       password: ${env:RABBITMQ_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [rabbitmq]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

   Kubernetes

   receivers:
     rabbitmq:
       endpoint: http://rabbitmq.default.svc.cluster.local:15672
       username: otel
       password: ${env:RABBITMQ_PASSWORD}
       collection_interval: 30s
   
   processors:
     batch:
     resourcedetection:
   
   exporters:
     otlp/osuite:
       endpoint: ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443
       headers:
         x-osuite-ingest-token: <your-ingest-token>
   
   service:
     pipelines:
       metrics:
         receivers: [rabbitmq]
         processors: [batch, resourcedetection]
         exporters: [otlp/osuite]

2. Start the Collector. On Docker and Kubernetes, the Collector and RabbitMQ must share a network so the endpoint resolves.

Validate

What you should see

Metrics named rabbitmq.* appear in Dashboards → Explore metrics within a minute, broken down by queue and virtual host.

Data collected

Metric	Description	Unit
rabbitmq.message.current	Messages currently in the queue, by state	{messages}
rabbitmq.message.published	Messages published to the queue	{messages}
rabbitmq.message.delivered	Messages delivered to consumers	{messages}
rabbitmq.message.acknowledged	Messages acknowledged by consumers	{messages}
rabbitmq.message.dropped	Unroutable messages discarded	{messages}
rabbitmq.consumer.count	Consumers reading from the queue	{consumers}

Node-level metrics (memory, disk, file descriptors, socket usage) are available by enabling the receiver’s optional node metrics.

Dashboards and alerts

Once metrics arrive, build a RabbitMQ dashboard in the dashboard builder from the series above. Alerts in Osuite are PromQL-based — see Alerts. Useful starting conditions: a growing rabbitmq.message.current in the ready state, a rabbitmq.consumer.count of zero on an active queue, and a rising rabbitmq.message.dropped rate.

Troubleshooting

• Connection refused on 15672 — confirm the Management Plugin is enabled and listening; the receiver uses the HTTP API, not AMQP on 5672.
• 401 Unauthorized — confirm the otel user has the monitoring tag and read permissions on the virtual hosts you monitor.

No data in Osuite after a few minutes? Work through these checks.

• Endpoint — confirm the exporter targets exactly ingest.<region>.osuite.io:443 for your region, over TLS.
• Token — confirm the ingest header carries a valid <your-ingest-token> and has not been rotated.
• Pipeline — confirm the signal you expect (traces, logs, or metrics) is wired into an active pipeline with the otlp/osuite exporter attached.
• Export errors — check the application or Collector logs for OTLP export failures (auth, DNS, TLS, connection refused).
• Network — confirm the host has outbound access to the ingest endpoint on port 443.
• Timing — allow up to a minute for the first data to appear before assuming a failure.

Still stuck? Ask the Investigation Agent or contact support.