Managing Collectors at Scale: OpAMP and Fleet Management (Grafana ❤️🔥 OTel Community Call #11)
In this episode of the Grafana OTel Community Call, we're joined by Bejal Lewis and Paschalis Tsilias from Grafana Labs to talk about OpAMP, the Open Agent Management Protocol, and what it takes to manage OpenTelemetry Collectors at scale. We'll cover what OpAMP is and why fleet management matters, where the spec stands today (it's still pre-release), and what it was like building production tooling on top of it. We'll also look at what went into adding the OpAMP extension to Grafana Alloy's OTel Engine, what "GA" means for Grafana Fleet Management versus the maturity of the upstream spec, and where OpAMP is headed next. Guests: · Bejal Lewis (https://www.linkedin.com/in/bejal-lewis/) · Marko Bachvarovski (https://www.linkedin.com/in/markobachvarovski/) Host: · Imma Valls (https://www.linkedin.com/in/imma-valls/) Join the conversation, bring your questions, and learn how OpenTelemetry evolves with contributions from across the community. #opentelemetry #fleetmanagement #opamp #grafana #observability URLS · https://opentelemetry.io/blog/2026/kubecon-na/ · https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/opamp/ · https://github.com/open-telemetry/opamp-spec · https://github.com/open-telemetry/opamp-go · https://github.com/grafana/alloy/pull/6632 · https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/cmd/opampsupervisor/specification/README.md · https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/deploy/other/agent-to-gateway/#when-to-use-this-pattern · https://grafana.com/whats-new/2026-07-08-remote-management-of-opentelemetry-collectors-is-generally-available/ · https://github.com/open-telemetry/community/blob/main/sigs.md#opamp · https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/blob/main/cmd/opampsupervisor/specification/README.md#supervisor-configuration · https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/pkgs/container/opentelemetry-operator%2Foperator-opamp-bridge · https://grafana.com/blog/manage-your-opentelemetry-collectors-with-fleet-management-in-grafana-cloud/#making-otel-configuration-work-across-multiple-pipelines TIMESTAMPS 00:00 Welcome, announcements, and guest introductions 03:27 What is OpAMP, and why does it matter? 07:31 OpAMP extension vs. supervisor 10:16 Contributing to OpAMP and open challenges 16:03 Building on an evolving specification 19:35 OpAMP capabilities: configuration, health, and updates 22:36 How Grafana Fleet Management uses OpAMP 26:21 Integrating the OpAMP supervisor into Alloy 29:36 Live demo: connecting Alloy and pushing remote configuration 34:35 Managing mixed fleets and scaling in production 38:32 Gateway deployment patterns 41:28 Kubernetes challenges and the OpAMP Bridge 43:39 Merging configurations and avoiding conflicts 50:25 Upstream priorities and the path to GA 57:09 Getting involved, trying it out, and closing takeaways