Where do OpenTelemetry logs end up in Elasticsearch

Elastic Observability
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Hi all,

I'm currently experimenting with using OpenTelemetry to send logs into Elasticsearch and trying to understand exactly where those logs end up once they arrive.

So far, I see that metrics and traces follow somewhat expected paths, but logs are less clear. In particular, I’m wondering:

  • What index or data stream do OpenTelemetry logs go into by default?
  • Is this behavior different if I'm using the Elastic OpenTelemetry Collector vs a vanilla OpenTelemetry Collector with the elasticsearch exporter?
  • If I want to route logs to a specific data stream like logs-myapp-default, what’s the recommended way to configure that? Should I rely on service.name, or override the index name in the exporter config?
  • Is there an official mapping or default ECS pipeline that handles OpenTelemetry logs?

I'm trying to avoid custom ingestion pipelines unless absolutely necessary, and would prefer to stay within Elastic’s recommended practices.

Any advice, links to docs, or working examples would be much appreciated.