How does Wavefront ingest metrics (proxy, direct ingestion, collectors)? [Advanced]
Answer
Wavefront/DX OpenExplore can ingest metrics through proxies, direct ingestion APIs, SDKs, agents, collectors, and integrations such as Telegraf, Kubernetes, cloud integrations, or OpenTelemetry pipelines depending on the environment.
Technical explanation
The proxy is common for controlled enterprise ingestion because it centralizes buffering, filtering, preprocessing, and egress control.
Direct ingestion can be useful for cloud integrations or applications that can safely send to the service endpoint.
Collectors normalize data from infrastructure, Kubernetes, applications, and cloud services before forwarding.
Hands-on example
Hands-on ingestion design: run a team of Wavefront proxies behind a load balancer. Agents and app SDKs send metrics to the proxy. The proxy applies preprocessor rules for tag normalization and filtering, then forwards to the observability backend.
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