NATS and SigNoz Integration

Input and output integration overview

The NATS Consumer Input Plugin enables real-time data consumption from NATS messaging subjects, integrating seamlessly into the Telegraf data pipeline for monitoring and metrics gathering.

This configuration turns any Telegraf agent into a Remote Write publisher for SigNoz, streaming rich metrics straight into the SigNoz backend with a single URL change.

Integration details

NATS

The NATS Consumer Plugin allows Telegraf to read metrics from specified NATS subjects and create metrics based on supported input data formats. Utilizing a Queue Group allows multiple instances of Telegraf to read from a NATS cluster in parallel, enhancing throughput and reliability. This plugin also supports various authentication methods, including username/password, NATS credentials files, and nkey seed files, ensuring secure communication with the NATS servers. It is particularly useful in environments where data persistence and message reliability are critical, thanks to features such as JetStream that facilitate the consumption of historical messages. Additionally, the ability to configure various operational parameters makes this plugin suitable for high-throughput scenarios while maintaining performance integrity.

SigNoz

SigNoz is an open source observability platform that stores metrics, traces, and logs. When you deploy SigNoz, its signoz-otel-collector-metrics service exposes a Prometheus Remote Write receiver (default :13133/api/v1/write). By configuring Telegraf’s Prometheus plugin to point at this endpoint, you can push any Telegraf collected metrics, SNMP counters, cloud services, or business KPIs—directly into SigNoz. The plugin natively serializes metrics in the Remote Write protobuf format, supports external labels, metadata export, retries, and TLS or bearer-token auth, so it fits zero-trust and multi-tenant SigNoz clusters. Inside SigNoz, the data lands in ClickHouse tables that back Metrics Explorer, alert rules, and unified dashboards. This approach lets organizations unify Prometheus and OTLP pipelines, enables long-term retention powered by ClickHouse compression, and avoids vendor lock-in while retaining PromQL-style queries.

Configuration

NATS

[[inputs.nats_consumer]]
  ## urls of NATS servers
  servers = ["nats://localhost:4222"]

  ## subject(s) to consume
  ## If you use jetstream you need to set the subjects
  ## in jetstream_subjects
  subjects = ["telegraf"]

  ## jetstream subjects
  ## jetstream is a streaming technology inside of nats.
  ## With jetstream the nats-server persists messages and
  ## a consumer can consume historical messages. This is
  ## useful when telegraf needs to restart it don't miss a
  ## message. You need to configure the nats-server.
  ## https://docs.nats.io/nats-concepts/jetstream.
  jetstream_subjects = ["js_telegraf"]

  ## name a queue group
  queue_group = "telegraf_consumers"

  ## Optional authentication with username and password credentials
  # username = ""
  # password = ""

  ## Optional authentication with NATS credentials file (NATS 2.0)
  # credentials = "/etc/telegraf/nats.creds"

  ## Optional authentication with nkey seed file (NATS 2.0)
  # nkey_seed = "/etc/telegraf/seed.txt"

  ## Use Transport Layer Security
  # secure = false

  ## Optional TLS Config
  # tls_ca = "/etc/telegraf/ca.pem"
  # tls_cert = "/etc/telegraf/cert.pem"
  # tls_key = "/etc/telegraf/key.pem"
  ## Use TLS but skip chain & host verification
  # insecure_skip_verify = false

  ## Sets the limits for pending msgs and bytes for each subscription
  ## These shouldn't need to be adjusted except in very high throughput scenarios
  # pending_message_limit = 65536
  # pending_bytes_limit = 67108864

  ## Max undelivered messages
  ## This plugin uses tracking metrics, which ensure messages are read to
  ## outputs before acknowledging them to the original broker to ensure data
  ## is not lost. This option sets the maximum messages to read from the
  ## broker that have not been written by an output.
  ##
  ## This value needs to be picked with awareness of the agent's
  ## metric_batch_size value as well. Setting max undelivered messages too high
  ## can result in a constant stream of data batches to the output. While
  ## setting it too low may never flush the broker's messages.
  # max_undelivered_messages = 1000

  ## Data format to consume.
  ## Each data format has its own unique set of configuration options, read
  ## more about them here:
  ## https://github.com/influxdata/telegraf/blob/master/docs/DATA_FORMATS_INPUT.md
  data_format = "influx"

SigNoz

[[outputs.prometheusremotewrite]]
  ## SigNoz OTEL-Collector metrics endpoint (Prometheus Remote Write receiver)
  ## Default port is 13133 when you install SigNoz with the Helm chart
  url = "http://signoz-otel-collector-metrics.monitoring.svc.cluster.local:13133/api/v1/write"

  ## Add identifying labels so you can slice & dice the data later
  external_labels = { host = "${HOSTNAME}", agent = "telegraf" }

  ## Forward host metadata for richer dashboards (SigNoz maps these to ClickHouse columns)
  send_metadata = true

  ## ----- Authentication (comment out what you don’t need) -----
  # bearer_token   = "$SIGNOZ_TOKEN"          # SaaS tenant token
  # basic_username = "signoz"                 # Basic auth (self-hosted)
  # basic_password = "secret"

  ## ----- TLS options (for SaaS or HTTPS self-hosted) -----
  # tls_ca                  = "/etc/ssl/certs/ca.crt"
  # tls_cert                = "/etc/telegraf/certs/telegraf.crt"
  # tls_key                 = "/etc/telegraf/certs/telegraf.key"
  # insecure_skip_verify    = false

  ## ----- Performance tuning -----
  max_batch_size = 10000      # samples per POST
  timeout        = "10s"
  retry_max      = 3

Input and output integration examples

NATS

1. Real-Time Analytics Dashboard: Utilize the NATS plugin to gather metrics from various NATS subjects in real time and feed them into a centralized analytics dashboard. This setup allows for immediate visibility into live application performance, enabling teams to react swiftly to operational issues or performance degradation.

2. Distributed System Monitoring: Deploy multiple instances of Telegraf configured with the NATS plugin across a distributed architecture. This approach allows teams to aggregate metrics from various microservices efficiently, providing a holistic view of system health and performance while ensuring no messages are dropped during transmission.

3. Historical Message Recovery: Leverage the capabilities of NATS JetStream along with this plugin to recover and process historical messages after Telegraf has been restarted. This feature is particularly beneficial for applications that require high reliability, ensuring that no critical metrics are lost even in case of service disruptions.

4. Dynamic Load Balancing: Implement a dynamic load balancing scenario where Telegraf instances consume messages from a NATS cluster based on load. Adjust the queue group settings to control the number of active consumers, allowing for better resource utilization and performance scaling as demand fluctuations occur.

SigNoz

1. Multi-Cluster Federated Monitoring: Drop a Telegraf DaemonSet into each Kubernetes cluster, tag metrics with cluster=<name>, and Remote Write them to a central SigNoz instance. Ops teams get a single PromQL window across prod, staging, and edge clusters without running Thanos sidecars.

2. Factory-Floor Edge Gateway: A rugged Intel NUC on the shop floor runs Telegraf to scrape Modbus PLCs and environmental sensors. It batches readings every 5 seconds and pushes them over an intermittent 4G link to SigNoz SaaS. ClickHouse compression keeps costs low while AI-based outlier detection in SigNoz flags overheating motors before failure.

3. SaaS Usage Metering: Telegraf runs alongside each micro-service, exporting per-tenant counters (api_calls, gigabytes_processed). Remote Write streams the data to SigNoz where a scheduled ClickHouse materialized view aggregates usage for monthly billing—no separate metering stack required.

4. Autoscaling Feedback Loop: Combine Telegraf’s Kubernetes input with the Remote Write output to publish granular pod CPU and queue-length metrics into SigNoz. A custom SigNoz alert fires when P95 latency breaches 200 ms and a GitOps controller reads that alert to trigger a HorizontalPodAutoscaler tweak—closing the loop between observability and automation.

Feedback

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