---
title: OpenTelemetry for the Docker CLI
description: Learn about how to capture OpenTelemetry metrics for the Docker command line
keywords: otel, opentelemetry, telemetry, traces, tracing, metrics, logs
aliases:
  - /config/otel/
---

{{< summary-bar feature_name="Docker CLI OpenTelemetry" >}}

The Docker CLI supports [OpenTelemetry](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/) instrumentation
for emitting metrics about command invocations. This is disabled by default.
You can configure the CLI to start emitting metrics to the endpoint that you
specify. This allows you to capture information about your `docker` command
invocations for more insight into your Docker usage.

Exporting metrics is opt-in, and you control where data is being sent by
specifying the destination address of the metrics collector.

## What is OpenTelemetry?

OpenTelemetry, or OTel for short, is an open observability framework for
creating and managing telemetry data, such as traces, metrics, and logs.
OpenTelemetry is vendor- and tool-agnostic, meaning that it can be used with a
broad variety of Observability backends.

Support for OpenTelemetry instrumentation in the Docker CLI means that the CLI can emit
information about events that take place, using the protocols and conventions
defined in the Open Telemetry specification.

## How it works

The Docker CLI doesn't emit telemetry data by default. Only if you've set an
environment variable on your system will Docker CLI attempt to emit OpenTelemetry
metrics, to the endpoint that you specify.

```bash
DOCKER_CLI_OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=<endpoint>
```

The variable specifies the endpoint of an OpenTelemetry collector, where telemetry data
about `docker` CLI invocation should be sent. To capture the data, you'll need
an OpenTelemetry collector listening on that endpoint.

The purpose of a collector is to receive the telemetry data, process it, and
exports it to a backend. The backend is where the telemetry data gets stored.
You can choose from a number of different backends, such as Prometheus or
InfluxDB.

Some backends provide tools for visualizing the metrics directly.
Alternatively, you can also run a dedicated frontend with support for
generating more useful graphs, such as Grafana.

## Setup

To get started capturing telemetry data for the Docker CLI, you'll need to:

- Set the `DOCKER_CLI_OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT` environment variable to point to an OpenTelemetry collector endpoint
- Run an OpenTelemetry collector that receives the signals from CLI command invocations
- Run a backend for storing the data received from the collector

The following Docker Compose file bootstraps a set of services to get started with OpenTelemetry.
It includes an OpenTelemetry collector that the CLI can send metrics to,