From Sensors to Insights: Building an Open Observability Pipeline for Industrial Systems

Monitoring industrial systems (factories, workshops, embedded networks) brings a unique set of challenges: unstable connectivity, aging protocols (Modbus, OPC-UA), limited compute power, and a strong need for real-time alerts. This talk walks through the design of a fully open-source, lightweight and secure observability pipeline tailored for industrial environments. From low-power edge collectors to centralized dashboards, we’ll demonstrate how to: Collect metrics & logs from both IT and OT systems, Normalize and enrich data (labels, scopes, priorities), Visualize and alert in Grafana with context-aware dashboards, Secure the data flow (TLS, token-based auth, edge buffering). We’ll present a real-world architecture using Telegraf, Vector, OpenTelemetry, VictoriaMetrics, Grafana and Loki, with deployment strategies suited for constrained networks and offline scenarios.