OpenTelemetry Load Generator

A command-line tool for generating OpenTelemetry (OTLP) telemetry to test and stress-test OpenTelemetry collectors, backends, and observability systems.

Features

• Support for concurrent workers to simulate high-throughput scenarios
• Configurable batch sizes and push intervals
• Built-in statistics reporting
• Sink server for receiving and tracking telemetry
• Control server for coordinating distributed load testing

Commands

Generator Command (gen traces)

Generate OTLP trace spans to send to an OTLP endpoint:

otel-loadgen gen traces [flags]

Generator Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--otlp-endpoint	localhost:4317	OTLP endpoint for exporting logs, metrics, and traces
--otlp-resources-per-batch	1	Number of resources per batch
--spans-per-resource	100	Number of trace spans per resource to generate
--duration	0 (forever)	How long to run the generator (e.g., 5m, 1h30m)
--report-interval	3s	Interval to report statistics
--push-interval	50ms	Interval between batch pushes
--workers	1	Number of concurrent workers to run
--control-endpoint	(none)	Endpoint of control server for distributed testing

Sink Command (sink)

Run a sink server that receives telemetry and tracks message delivery:

otel-loadgen sink [flags]

Sink Flags

Flag	Default	Description
--addr	localhost:5317	Address to listen on for incoming telemetry
--control-addr	localhost:5000	Control server address for reporting stats
--report-interval	3s	Interval to report delivery statistics

Build and Run

Prerequisites

• Go 1.24.1 or later
• Make (optional, for using Makefile)

Building from Source

# Build the binary
make build

# The binary will be created at dist/otel-loadgen

Running from Docker container

# Run trace generator
docker run -ti streamfold/otel-loadgen gen traces [...]

# Run sink server
docker run -ti streamfold/otel-loadgen sink [...]

Usage Examples

Basic Trace Generation

# Generate traces indefinitely with default settings
./dist/otel-loadgen gen traces

# Generate traces for 5 minutes with custom endpoint
./dist/otel-loadgen gen traces --otlp-endpoint http://collector:4317 --duration 5m

# High-throughput test with multiple workers
./dist/otel-loadgen gen traces \
  --workers 10 \
  --spans-per-resource 1000 \
  --push-interval 10ms \
  --otlp-resources-per-batch 5

Sink Server

# Run a sink server to receive telemetry
./dist/otel-loadgen sink

# Run sink server with custom addresses
./dist/otel-loadgen sink \
  --addr localhost:5317 \
  --control-addr localhost:5000 \
  --report-interval 5s

Distributed Load Testing

# Terminal 1: Start the sink server (receiver)
./dist/otel-loadgen sink --addr localhost:5317 --control-addr localhost:5000

# Terminal 2: Start Rotel, exporting OTLP to localhost:5317
rotel start --otlp-exporter-endpoint localhost:5317

# Terminal 3: Start generator 
./dist/otel-loadgen gen traces \
  --otlp-endpoint http://localhost:4317 \
  --control-endpoint http://localhost:5000 \
  --workers 5 \
  --duration 10m

License

See LICENSE file for details.