Your Collector, Your Rules: Introducing BYOC and the OpenTelemetry Distribution Builder

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OpenTelemetry’s super-power has always been: Choice.

Yet, most observability vendors still insist you run their collector. Today we’re removing that last point of friction.

With Bring Your Own Collector (BYOC), Bindplane now accepts any upstream-compatible build, recognizes exactly which receivers, processors, and exporters it contains, and adapts the UI and configuration workflow on the fly. No forks, no vendor stamp—just the collector you already trust, fully managed by Bindplane.

How BYOC Works

When a custom binary connects over OpAMP, Bindplane inspects the embedded component manifest and tags the collector with its capabilities. The Agent Configuration view automatically exposes the “available components” for that build, so integrations and configurations show only what your collector can run.

If you decide to add a new component—maybe a Kafka or Prometheus module—in your own OpenTelemetry Collector distro, you’ll include it in your custom manifest.yaml, then build and release a new version of the collector. The moment an instance of that collector version connects to Bindplane the UI will show the new components as available.

All rollout and health dashboards continue to work exactly as they do for the Bindplane Distro for OpenTelemetry (BDOT) collector, giving you a seamless upgrade path with zero lock-in.

Meet the OpenTelemetry Distribution Builder (ODB)

Of course, managing your own distro can be painful—cross-platform compiling, packaging, signing, and CI automation take real effort. That’s why we’re also launching OpenTelemetry Distribution Builder (ODB), an Apache-licensed, open-source tool that turns a single manifest.yaml into production-ready artifacts. ODB sits on top of the community’s Collector Builder (OCB) but goes much further:

• Multi-platform binaries for Linux, Windows, and macOS, including arm64.
• Package generation for RPM, DEB, APK, and tar.gz.
• GitHub Actions workflow that tags versioned releases and uploads assets automatically.
• Simple updates—edit the manifest, push to main, and watch CI publish the new build.

With ODB, adding or removing a component is a three-line diff, not a weekend project. Build locally, in Docker, with Google Cloud Build, or let GitHub Actions do it for you.

Why BYOC + ODB Matters

• Complete vendor neutrality – You decide what lives in your telemetry pipeline, satisfying even the strictest security review.
• Slimmer binaries – Ship only the receivers you need; fewer dependencies mean smaller attack surfaces and faster cold starts.
• Faster feedback loop – Test new OpenTelemetry Collector contrib features the day they merge upstream; no more waiting for a vendor distro to include new modules.
• Unified fleet operations – Despite the freedom, you still get Bindplane’s version history, version comparisons, fine-grained RBAC permission, and fleet-wide progressive rollouts.

Ready to Try It?

1. Fork ODB or click Use latest version on GitHub Marketplace.
2. Define the receivers, processors, exporters, and connectors your environment needs in manifest.yaml.
3. Push to GitHub; the provided workflow publishes binaries and packages in minutes.
4. Install your collector with the provided binaries, point it at your Bindplane OpAMP endpoint, and watch it light up in the Agent tab.

BYOC plus ODB brings OpenTelemetry’s promise of portability full-circle: collect anywhere, process anywhere, your collector, your rules.

Ready to try it? Spin up a free instance of Bindplane Cloud and hit the ground running right away.