These docs are for Cribl Stream 4.12 and are no longer actively maintained.

See the latest version (4.13).

ServiceNow Cloud Observability

The ServiceNow Cloud Observability Destination enables seamless integration with ServiceNow’s Cloud Observability platform. This Destination routes observability data, including logs, metrics, and traces, to ServiceNow for enhanced monitoring and analysis. To ensure your data conforms to the expected format, refer to the Protocol section below.

To get started, connecting to ServiceNow Cloud Observability is simple. Grab your ServiceNow Cloud Observability access token, pick your preferred protocol and endpoint, then add the token to your Destination settings. Need more detailed instructions or configuration options? See below!

Type: Streaming | TLS Support: Configurable | PQ Support: Yes

Configuring a ServiceNow Cloud Observability Destination

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In Cribl Stream, set up a ServiceNow Cloud Observability Destination.

1. From the top nav, click Manage, then select a Worker Group to configure. Next, you have two options:

   • To configure via QuickConnect, click Routing then QuickConnect (Cribl Stream) or Collect (Cribl Edge). Next, click Add Destination and from the resulting drawer’s tiles, select ServiceNow Cloud Observability. Next, click either Add Destination or (if displayed) Select Existing.
   • To configure via the Routes, click Data then Destinations (Cribl Stream) or More then Destinations (Cribl Edge). Select ServiceNow Cloud Observability from the list of tiles or the Destinations list. Next, click Add Destination to open a New Destination modal.

2. In the Destination modal, configure the following under General Settings:

   • Output ID: Enter a unique name to identify this output definition. If you clone this Destination, Cribl Stream will add -CLONE to the original Output ID.
   • OTLP version: Already set to 1.3.1 and cannot be changed.
   • Protocol: Use the drop-down to choose the protocol to use when sending data:
     • gRPC (default): Uses Protocol Buffers (Protobuf) for serialization.
     • HTTP: Uses Binary Protobuf encoding (does not support JSON Protobuf).
   • Endpoint: The endpoint to send data to ServiceNow. Default options are ingest.lightstep.com:443 (United States) and ingest.eu.lightstep.com:443 (Europe).
     • You can specify a custom endpoint using either a valid URL or an IP address (IPv4 or IPv6). Enclose IPv6 addresses in square brackets (for example, [2001:db8:85a3:0000:0000:8a2e:0370:7334]).
     • To proxy outbound HTTP/S requests, see System Proxy Configuration.
   • Auth token (text secret): Create or select a Cribl stored text secret that contains your ServiceNow Cloud Observability access token, ensuring secure authentication for data transmission.
   • Optional Settings:
     • When using HTTP, you can customize the path instead of using the default cloud endpoints. This is useful when integrating with a hosted Lightstep satellite.
     • Backpressure behavior: Whether to Block, Drop, or Persistent Queue events when all receivers are exerting backpressure.
     • Tags: Optionally, add tags that you can use to filter and group Destinations on the Destinations page. These tags aren’t added to processed events. Use a tab or hard return between (arbitrary) tag names.

3. Depending on the protocol you’ve selected, you have the following options:

   • gRPC provides TLS settings.
   • HTTP provides retry options, in addition to custom paths.

4. The Processing Settings and Advanced Settings provide granular control over how data is handled and transmitted.

   • Processing Settings allow you to define pre-processing and post-processing Pipelines, ensuring that events conform to the relevant Protobuf specifications for traces, metrics, and logs. This includes adding metadata, applying transformations, and conditioning the data.
   • Advanced Settings offer additional configuration options that enhance the flexibility and performance of data transmission.
     • For gRPC, this includes connection timeout, keep-alive time, and metadata headers.
     • For HTTP, this includes options like custom path overrides for traces, metrics, and logs, as well as settings for validating server certificates and using round-robin DNS. HTTP is simpler to set up and more widely compatible with existing tools and platforms.

5. Click Save, then Commit & Deploy.

6. Use the Test tab in the Destination’s configuration modal to validate the configuration and connectivity of your Destination.

Custom HTTP Path

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To send data to a custom location, override the default endpoint paths. When the Protocol is set to HTTP, this Destination sends data to the following endpoints by default:

• Traces: <endpoint>/traces/otlp/v0.9
• Metrics: <endpoint>/metrics/otlp/v0.9
• Logs: <endpoint>/v1/logs

<endpoint> refers to the base URL you specified in the Endpoint setting above.

To override a default path, provide only the desired path in the corresponding field: Traces endpoint override, Metrics endpoint override, or Logs endpoint override.

TLS Settings (Client Side)

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TLS is available only when General Settings > Protocol is set to gRPC.

Use TLS Default is toggled off. When toggled on:

Validate server certs: Toggle on (default) to reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, nor by another trusted CA (for example, the system’s CA).

Minimum TLS version: Optionally, select the minimum TLS version to use when connecting.

Maximum TLS version: Optionally, select the maximum TLS version to use when connecting.

Certificate name: The name of the predefined certificate.

CA certificate path: Path on client containing CA certificates (in PEM format) to use to verify the server’s cert. Path can reference $ENV_VARS.

Private key path (mutual auth): Path on client containing the private key (in PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS. Use only if mutual auth is required.

Certificate path (mutual auth): Path on client containing certificates in (PEM format) to use. Path can reference $ENV_VARS. Use only if mutual auth is required.

Passphrase: Passphrase to use to decrypt private key.

Persistent Queue Settings

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The Persistent Queue Settings tab displays when the Backpressure behavior option in General settings is set to Persistent Queue. Persistent queue buffers and preserves incoming events when a downstream Destination has an outage or experiences backpressure.

Before enabling persistent queue, learn more about persistent queue behavior and how to optimize it with your system:

• About Persistent Queues
• Optimize Destination Persistent Queues (dPQ)
• Destination Backpressure Triggers

On Cribl-managed Cloud Workers (with an Enterprise plan), this tab exposes only the destructive Clear Persistent Queue button (described at the end of this section). A maximum queue size of 1 GB disk space is automatically allocated per PQ‑enabled Destination, per Worker Process. The 1 GB limit is on outbound uncompressed data, and no compression is applied to the queue.

This limit is not configurable. If the queue fills up, Cribl Stream/Edge will block outbound data. To configure the queue size, compression, queue-full fallback behavior, and other options below, use a hybrid Group.

Mode: Use this menu to select when Cribl Stream/Edge engages the persistent queue in response to backpressure events from this Destination. The options are:

If a Worker/Edge Node starts with an invalid Mode setting, it automatically switches to Error mode. This might happen if the Worker/Edge Node is running a version that does not support other modes (older than 4.9.0), or if it encounters a nonexistent value in YAML configuration files.

File size limit: The maximum data volume to store in each queue file before closing it. Enter a numeral with units of KB, MB, etc. Defaults to 1 MB.

Queue size limit: The maximum amount of disk space that the queue can consume on each Worker Process. When the queue reaches this limit, the Destination stops queueing data and applies the Queue‑full behavior. Defaults to 5 GB. This field accepts positive numbers with units of KB, MB, GB, and so on. You can set it as high as 1 TB, unless you’ve configured a different Worker Process PQ size limit on the Group Settings/Fleet Settings page.

Queue file path: The location for the persistent queue files. Defaults to $CRIBL_HOME/state/queues. Cribl Stream/Edge will append /<worker‑id>/<output‑id> to this value.

Compression: Set the codec to use when compressing the persisted data after closing a file. Defaults to None. Gzip is also available.

Queue-full behavior: Whether to block or drop events when the queue begins to exert backpressure. A queue begins to exert backpressure when the disk is low or at full capacity. This setting has two options:

• Block: The output will refuse to accept new data until the receiver is ready. The system will return block signals back to the sender.
• Drop new data: Discard all new events until the backpressure event has resolved and the receiver is ready.

Backpressure duration Limit: When Mode is set to Backpressure, this setting controls how long to wait during network slowdowns before activating queues. A shorter duration enhances critical data loss prevention, while a longer duration helps avoid unnecessary queue transitions in environments with frequent, brief network fluctuations. The default value is 30 seconds.

Strict ordering: Toggle on (default) to enable FIFO (first in, first out) event forwarding, ensuring Cribl Stream/Edge sends earlier queued events first when receivers recover. The persistent queue flushes every 10 seconds in this mode. Toggle off to prioritize new events over queued events, configure a custom drain rate for the queue, and display this option:

• Drain rate limit (EPS): Optionally, set a throttling rate (in events per second) on writing from the queue to receivers. (The default 0 value disables throttling.) Throttling the queue drain rate can boost the throughput of new and active connections by reserving more resources for them. You can further optimize Worker startup connections and CPU load in the Worker Processes settings.

Clear Persistent Queue: For Cloud Enterprise only, click this button if you want to delete the files that are currently queued for delivery to this Destination. If you click this button, a confirmation modal appears. Clearing the queue frees up disk space by permanently deleting the queued data, without delivering it to downstream receivers. This button only appears after you define the Output ID.

Use the Clear Persistent Queue button with caution to avoid data loss. See Steps to Safely Disable and Clear Persistent Queues for more information.

Processing Settings

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Post‑Processing

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Pipeline: Pipeline or Pack to process data before sending the data out using this output.

System fields: A list of fields to automatically add to events that use this output – both metric events, as dimensions; and log events, as labels. Supports wildcards.

By default, includes cribl_pipe (Cribl Stream Pipeline that processed the event).

Other options include:

• cribl_host – Cribl Stream Node that processed the event.
• cribl_input – Cribl Stream Source that processed the event.
• cribl_output – Cribl Stream Destination that processed the event.
• cribl_route – Cribl Stream Route (or QuickConnect) that processed the event.
• cribl_wp – Cribl Stream Worker Process that processed the event.

Retries

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This tab is displayed when General Settings > Protocol is set to HTTP.

Honor Retry-After header: Toggle on to honor a Retry-After header, provided that the header specifies a delay no longer than 180 seconds. Cribl Stream/Edge limits the delay to 180 seconds even if the Retry-After header specifies a longer delay. Any Retry-After header received takes precedence over all other options configured in the Retries section. Toggle off to ignore all Retry-After headers.

Settings for failed HTTP requests: When you want to automatically retry requests that receive particular HTTP response status codes, use these settings to list those response codes.

For any HTTP response status codes that are not explicitly configured for retries, Cribl Stream/Edge applies the following rules:

Upon receiving a response code that’s on the list, Cribl Stream/Edge first waits for a set time interval called the Pre-backoff interval and then begins retrying the request. Time between retries increases based on an exponential backoff algorithm whose base is the Backoff multiplier, until the backoff multiplier reaches the Backoff limit (ms). At that point, Cribl Stream/Edge continues retrying the request without increasing the time between retries any further.

If the sender (which manages the connection to the Destination) is at capacity, it will not accept any incoming events. These incoming events originate internally from a previous stage of the data flow when Destinations send outbound requests to their respective external services, and they include retry requests and new requests. Any events that were already in transit when the sender reached capacity will continue to be processed downstream.

Sender capacity is freed up when an outgoing request succeeds or encounters a non-retryable error. When the sender has available capacity again, it will resume accepting incoming events. This capacity management is influenced by the number of active connections and configured limits, such as concurrency and buffer sizes. If a Pipeline sends events faster than the Destination can process, the buffers may fill up, leading to backpressure and Sender at capacity warnings. This backpressure prevents the sender from accepting additional requests until capacity is restored.

By default, this Destination has no response codes configured for automatic retries. For each response code you want to add to the list, select Add Setting and configure the following settings:

• HTTP status code: A response code that indicates a failed request, for example 429 (Too Many Requests) or 503 (Service Unavailable).
• Pre-backoff interval (ms): The amount of time to wait before beginning retries, in milliseconds. Defaults to 1000 (one second).
• Backoff multiplier: The base for the exponential backoff algorithm. A value of 2 (the default) means that Cribl Stream/Edge will retry after 2 seconds, then 4 seconds, then 8 seconds, and so on.
• Backoff limit (ms): The maximum backoff interval Cribl Stream/Edge should apply for its final retry, in milliseconds. Default (and minimum) is 10,000 (10 seconds); maximum is 180,000 (180 seconds, or 3 minutes).

Retry timed-out HTTP requests: Toggle on to automatically retry requests that have timed out and display the following settings for configuring retry behavior:

• Pre-backoff interval (ms): The amount of time to wait before beginning retries, in milliseconds. Defaults to 1000 (one second).
• Backoff multiplier: The base for the exponential backoff algorithm. A value of 2 (the default) means that Cribl Stream/Edge will retry after 2 seconds, then 4 seconds, then 8 seconds, and so on.
• Backoff limit (ms): The maximum backoff interval Cribl Stream/Edge should apply for its final retry, in milliseconds. Default (and minimum) is 10,000 (10 seconds); maximum is 180,000 (180 seconds, or 3 minutes).

Advanced Settings

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This tab’s options depend on whether General Settings > Protocol is set to the gRPC or HTTP transport.

Compression: Compression type to apply to messages sent to the OpenTelemetry endpoint. Gzip (the default) and None are available for both protocols; Deflate is available for gRPC only.

Request timeout: Amount of time (in seconds) to wait for a request to complete before aborting it. Defaults to 30 sec.

Request concurrency: Maximum number of concurrent requests before blocking. This is set per Worker Process. Defaults to 5.

Body size limit (KB): Maximum size of the request body before compression. Defaults to 2048 KB. The actual request body size might exceed the specified value because the Destination adds bytes when it writes to the downstream receiver. Cribl recommends that you experiment with the Body size limit value until downstream receivers reliably accept all events.

Flush period (sec): Maximum time between requests. Low values could cause the payload size to be smaller than the configured Max body size. Defaults to 1 sec.

Auth token name: Name of the header or metadata key that will carry your ServiceNow Cloud Observability access token during data transmission. The default is lightstep-access-token and is customizable to match your specific requirements.

Environment: Optionally, specify a single Git branch on which to enable this configuration. If this field is empty, the config will be enabled everywhere.

Additional Settings for gRPC

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When General Settings > Protocol is set to gRPC, the Advanced Settings tab adds the following options.

Connection timeout: Amount of time (milliseconds) to wait for the connection to establish before retrying. Defaults to 10000 (10 sec.).

Keep alive time (seconds): How often the sender should ping the peer to keep the connection alive. Defaults to 30.

Metadata: Extra information to send with each gRPC request. Click Add Metadata to add each item as a Key-Value pair. The Key field is arbitrary. The Value field is a JavaScript expression that is evaluated just once, when this Destination is initialized. If you pass credentials as metadata, Cribl recommends using C.Secret().

Additional Settings for HTTP

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When General Settings > Protocol is set to HTTP, the Advanced Settings tab adds the following options.

Validate server certs: Toggle on to reject certificates that are not authorized by a CA in the CA certificate path, nor by another trusted CA (e.g., the system’s CA).

Round-robin DNS: Toggle on to enable round-robin DNS lookup across multiple IP addresses, IPv4 and IPv6. When a DNS server resolves a Fully Qualified Domain Name (FQDN) to multiple IP addresses, Cribl Stream will sequentially use each address in the order they are returned by the DNS server for subsequent connection attempts.

Keep alive: By default, Cribl Stream sends Keep-Alive headers to the remote server and preserves the connection from the client side up to a maximum of 120 seconds. Toggle this off if you want Cribl Stream to close the connection immediately after sending a request.

Extra HTTP headers: Click Add Header to define additional HTTP headers to pass to all events. Each row is a Name‑Value pair. Values will be sent encrypted. You can also add headers dynamicall,y on a per-event basis, in the __headers field.

Safe headers: Add headers here to declare them as safe to log in plaintext. (Sensitive headers such as authorization will always be redacted, even if listed here.) Use a tab or hard return to separate header names.

Protocol and Transport Support

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This Destination leverages the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) v1.3.1 to send observability data to ServiceNow. It supports both gRPC and HTTP protocols, ensuring flexibility in data transmission. OTLP defines Protocol buffer (Protobuf) schemas for its payloads (requests and responses). With the HTTP transport, this Destination supports Binary Protobuf payload encoding, but currently does not support JSON Protobuf.

When configuring Pipelines (including pre-processing and post-processing Pipelines), you need to ensure that events sent to this Destination conform to the relevant Protobuf specification.

• For traces, opentelemetry/proto/trace/v1/trace.proto
• For metrics, opentelemetry/proto/metrics/v1/metrics.proto
• For logs, opentelemetry/proto/logs/v1/logs.proto

This Destination will drop non-conforming events. If the Destination encounters a parsing error when trying to convert an event to OTLP, it discards the event and Cribl Stream logs the error.

Troubleshooting

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The Destination’s configuration modal has helpful tabs for troubleshooting:

Live Data: Try capturing live data to see real-time events as they flow through the Destination. On the Live Data tab, click Start Capture to begin viewing real-time data.

Logs: Review and search the logs that provide detailed information about the delivery process, including any errors or warnings that may have occurred.

Test: Ensures that the Destination is correctly set up and reachable. Verify that sample events are sent correctly by clicking Run Test.

You can also view the Monitoring page that provides a comprehensive overview of data volume and rate, helping you identify delivery issues. Analyze the graphs showing events and bytes in/out over time.