Legacy Setup

You can always fall back to our traditional way of integration as introduced below, which is by importing SkyWalking into your project and starting the agent.

Defaults

By default, SkyWalking Python agent uses gRPC protocol to report data to SkyWalking backend, in SkyWalking backend, the port of gRPC protocol is 11800, and the port of HTTP protocol is 12800,

See all default configuration values in the Configuration Vocabulary

You could configure agent_collector_backend_services (or environment variable SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES) and set agent_protocol (or environment variable SW_AGENT_PROTOCOL to one of gprc, http or kafka according to the protocol you would like to use.

Report data via gRPC protocol (Default)

For example, if you want to use gRPC protocol to report data, configure agent_collector_backend_services (or environment variable SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES) to <oap-ip-or-host>:11800, such as 127.0.0.1:11800:

from skywalking import agent, config

config.init(agent_collector_backend_services='127.0.0.1:11800', agent_name='your awesome service', agent_instance_name='your-instance-name or <generated uuid>')

agent.start()

gRPC multi-address (failover)

Pass a comma-separated list. The agent opens one gRPC channel and lets C-core pick_first fail over (same idea as Node sw-static). Each process shuffles the preferred backend at channel build; :authority / TLS SNI still use the first configured endpoint.

config.init(
    agent_collector_backend_services='oap-a:11800,oap-b:11800',
    agent_name='your awesome service',
)
agent.start()

Implementation notes (maintainers / operators):

  • Mixed IPv4/IPv6 stays in one list; IPv4 is encoded as IPv4-mapped IPv6 for grpcio so pick_first can try both families.
  • Multi-hostname lists are DNS-expanded once at channel build (about 5s lookup budget per name); there is no periodic re-resolve — prefer a single address or stable IPs when DNS changes.
  • Channel :authority / TLS SAN uses grpc.default_authority = the first configured endpoint (before shuffle). With agent_force_tls, every backend cert must cover that authority.
  • Reporters wait until the channel is READY; non-READY skips the RPC rather than failing fast into a black hole.
  • After a silent backend switch that stays READY, instance properties are re-reported on the normal properties period so the new OAP learns the instance.
  • Reconnect backoff caps at 30s.

gRPC HTTP proxy (behavior change)

grpc.enable_http_proxy=0 is set on every gRPC channel, including a single-address config. Host http_proxy / https_proxy / no_proxy are ignored for OAP traffic.

If you currently reach OAP only through an HTTP CONNECT proxy, upgrading this agent will lose that path. The agent disables the proxy so application proxy env vars cannot silently black-hole telemetry, and because HTTP CONNECT happens before name resolution — it cannot express a comma-separated backend list.

Best-effort reporting and buffers

Send failures are discarded and never retried (a failed batch is dropped). On process shutdown the agent flushes only while the channel is READY, with a short time budget, then abandons whatever is still queued.

When a reporter queue is full (SW_AGENT_TRACE_REPORTER_MAX_BUFFER_SIZE / log / meter / snapshot equivalents), new items are dropped. The agent logs drops at most once per 30 seconds, with the increment since the last line and the process total. Raise the buffer if you routinely see these under load; a full queue during an outage is expected because the READY gate holds data until the backend returns.

Report data via HTTP protocol

However, if you want to use HTTP protocol to report data, configure agent_collector_backend_services (or environment variable SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES) to <oap-ip-or-host>:12800, such as 127.0.0.1:12800, further set agent_protocol (or environment variable SW_AGENT_PROTOCOL to http):

Remember you should install skywalking-python with extra requires http, pip install "apache-skywalking[http].

from skywalking import agent, config

config.init(agent_collector_backend_services='127.0.0.1:12800', agent_name='your awesome service', agent_protocol='http', agent_instance_name='your-instance-name or <generated uuid>')

agent.start()

Report data via Kafka protocol

Please make sure OAP is consuming the same Kafka topic as your agent produces to, kafka_namespace must match OAP side configuration plugin.kafka.namespace

Finally, if you want to use Kafka protocol to report data, configure kafka_bootstrap_servers (or environment variable SW_KAFKA_BOOTSTRAP_SERVERS) to kafka-brokers, such as 127.0.0.1:9200, further set agent_protocol (or environment variable SW_AGENT_PROTOCOL to kafka):

Remember you should install skywalking-python with extra requires kafka, pip install "apache-skywalking[kafka]".

from skywalking import agent, config

config.init(kafka_bootstrap_servers='127.0.0.1:9200', agent_name='your awesome service', agent_protocol='kafka', agent_instance_name='your-instance-name or <generated uuid>')

agent.start()

Alternatively, you can also pass the configurations via environment variables (such as SW_AGENT_NAME, SW_AGENT_COLLECTOR_BACKEND_SERVICES, etc.) so that you don't need to call config.init.

All supported environment variables can be found in the Environment Variables List.