Enable Observability for NeMo Guardrails

To enable observability for the guardrail executions in the NeMo Guardrails microservice, you need an OTLP-compatible backend that receives the OpenTelemetry traces. You can update your Helm chart to either use the provided OpenTelemetry collector or configure it to use your own collector.

---

Option 1: Use the Provided OpenTelemetry Collector

The NeMo Guardrails Helm chart includes an optional OpenTelemetry collector service that can be deployed as a separate pod alongside the service. To enable it, update your values.yaml file:

guardrails:
  # -- Whether to enable OpenTelemetry for the NeMo Guardrails microservice.
  otelExporterEnabled: true
  # -- Configuration for the "opentelemetry-collector" service.
  opentelemetry-collector:
    enabled: true

The following is the default guardrails.opentelemetry-collector configuration. The guardrails.opentelemetry-collector.enabled field is set to false by default. Change it to true to enable the OpenTelemetry collector.

You can override the default configuration in the guardrails.opentelemetry-collector.config section as needed. Use the OpenTelemetry Collector values file as a reference.

guardrails:
  opentelemetry-collector:
    enabled: false
    mode: deployment
    config:
      receivers:
        otlp:
          protocols:
            grpc: {}
            http:
              cors:
                allowed_origins:
                  - "*"
      exporters:
        debug:
          verbosity: detailed
      processors:
        batch: {}
      service:
        pipelines:
          traces:
            receivers: [otlp]
            exporters: [debug]
            processors: [batch]
          metrics:
            receivers: [otlp]
            exporters: [debug]
            processors: [batch]
          logs:
            receivers: [otlp]
            exporters: [debug]
            processors: [batch]

Verify the Collector Is Running

You can verify the default Collector is running ready to accept connections by ensuring the opentelmetry-collector pod was deployed in your Kubernetes namespace.

kubectl get pods -n <your_namespace>

Verify the opentelemetry-collector pod’s status is “Running”.

NAME                                            READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
nemo-opentelemetry-collector-7f6856896d-w99sk   1/1     Running   0          2d6h

---

Option 2: Use Your Own Collector

If you have an existing OpenTelemetry infrastructure, you can configure the NeMo Guardrails service to export telemetry data to your collector. In the values.yaml file, set the OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT environment variable in the guardrails.otelEnvVars section.

guardrails:
  # -- Whether to enable OpenTelemetry for the NeMo Guardrails microservice.
  otelExporterEnabled: true
  # -- OpenTelemetry environment configuration variables for the NeMo Guardrails microservice.
  otelEnvVars:
    OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT: "<your-endpoint>"