Support dot-separated OpenTelemetry metric names in OpenTelemetry output plugin #18251
Description
Use Case
We use Telegraf as an OpenTelemetry metrics pipeline component,
exporting metrics via OTLP to an OpenTelemetry-native backend.
Metrics are defined according to OpenTelemetry semantic conventions
(e.g. http.server.duration, http.client.request.count).
To keep metric naming consistent across the OpenTelemetry ecosystem,
it is important to preserve dot-separated metric names.
Expected behavior
Telegraf OpenTelemetry output should be able to emit metrics using
dot-separated names as defined by OpenTelemetry semantic conventions.
Ideally this would be configurable, for example:
- an option to preserve OTEL metric names
- or a naming mode (e.g.
otelvsprometheus)/separator mode (e.g..vs_)
Actual behavior
This also impacts existing dashboards and alerting rules,
as metric names emitted by Telegraf differ from
OpenTelemetry-recommended names.
As a result, dashboards and alerts defined using OTEL metric names
cannot be reused without manual renaming.
Additional info
Impact on production usage:
- Existing dashboards and alerting rules are built around
OpenTelemetry semantic metric names - Using Telegraf requires renaming metrics or duplicating dashboards
- This increases migration cost and risk of inconsistencies