Receiver-Exporter Rate Divergence Indicating Pipeline Issues
criticalreliabilityUpdated Feb 23, 2026
In Jaeger v2 (OTEL-based), when otelcol_receiver_accepted_spans increases but otelcol_exporter_sent_spans does not match the rate, spans are being lost in the processing pipeline between reception and storage.
How to detect:
Monitor the ratio of otelcol_exporter_sent_spans to otelcol_receiver_accepted_spans. These should increase at the same rate. Divergence indicates pipeline processing or storage write failures.
Recommended action:
Check collector logs at debug level for processing errors. Verify storage backend connectivity and write capacity. Review batch processor configuration. Check for connector or processor failures in the pipeline.