Choose the OTLP transport for the actual Azure Monitor ingestion path

Source facts

Azure Monitor’s documented OpenTelemetry experience is preview and is not recommended for production workloads. Its AMA path uses local gRPC: port 4317 for metrics and 4319 for logs and traces. Port 4319 is AMA-specific, not a canonical OTLP port. The AKS integration supports HTTP/protobuf, not JSON or OTLP/gRPC, while the Collector’s Azure export also uses HTTP/protobuf. Microsoft Learn.

Applicability

Use this comparison during a bounded preview evaluation. Identify each hop separately: an application’s connection to a local receiver and that receiver’s export to Azure are not automatically the same protocol contract.

DSE recommendation

Document the application’s immediate receiver and its required transport before copying an OTLP endpoint configuration. Have the application and platform owners agree which ingestion path is being tested. Keep signal-specific endpoints explicit, and do not infer that a familiar port number makes gRPC and HTTP payloads interchangeable. Avoid changing network controls until the selected transport matches the documented receiver.

Verification

Inspect the effective exporter endpoint, signal type and protocol in the test deployment. Send an approved identifiable sample through each intended signal path and check receiver errors as well as destination data. Record which hop accepted the sample and whether it reached the expected experience. A reachable socket alone is not the acceptance result; retain unresolved protocol mismatches before expanding the preview test.

Official references

Microsoft Learn: OpenTelemetry ingestion paths, preview. Source reviewed September 9, 2026.