OpenTelemetry
OpenTelemetry is an open observability framework for generating, collecting, processing, and exporting traces, metrics, and logs. It standardizes how your software describes its behavior without providing the storage or analysis backend itself.
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Don't Panic
Don't Panic - OpenTelemetry
OpenTelemetry gives you a shared way to produce and move telemetry from software. Telemetry describes what a system did. OpenTelemetry focuses on traces, metrics, and logs. It also defines common metadata and a protocol for carrying that data. It is not the database that stores telemetry and not the UI where you search traces. You send its output to an observability backend that stores, queries, and presents the data.
A useful path is application to instrumentation to SDK to exporter to Collector to backend. Instrumentation observes an operation through an API. A language SDK implements that API, processes telemetry, and hands it to an exporter. The exporter sends data to a backend or to the OpenTelemetry Collector. The Collector can receive, process, and export through pipelines. The Collector is optional and creates a control point outside the application for batching, filtering, enriching, sampling, and routing.
Traces describe request paths as spans. Metrics record measurements over time. Logs are timestamped events that can carry trace correlation. Resources describe the producing entity. Attributes describe individual signals. Semantic conventions name common fields so teams share vocabulary. Baggage travels with context and must not carry secrets.
OpenTelemetry is a multi-repository project: specifications, language SDKs, the Collector, and semantic conventions evolve on separate release trains. This course therefore tracks the specification releases for shared contracts rather than naming one repository as Upstream under ADR 0046.
Read the Intro for the five-stage path and signal roles. Use the Cheatsheet when you need API, SDK, and Collector landmarks. Updates follows OpenTelemetry specification releases that change those contracts.
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Sources
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/what-is-opentelemetry/
Supports
- OpenTelemetry as an observability framework for generating, collecting, and exporting telemetry
- Traces, metrics, and logs as core telemetry data
- OpenTelemetry as vendor-agnostic and not an observability backend
- Major components including APIs, SDKs, OTLP, semantic conventions, instrumentation, and Collector
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/
Supports
- Official concept map and vocabulary
- Relationships among signals, instrumentation, context, resources, conventions, and sampling
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/components/
Supports
- API, SDK, and data component responsibilities
- SDK processing, configuration, and export concepts
- Instrumentation library and propagator roles
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/
Supports
- Signals as system outputs
- Current trace, metric, log, and baggage coverage
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/traces/
Supports
- Traces as request or operation paths
- Spans, span context, attributes, events, links, status, and kinds
- Trace export destinations and context propagation
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/metrics/
Supports
- Metrics as runtime measurements
- Aggregation, instruments, views, and cardinality limits
- Aggregate analysis compared with individual request tracing
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/logs/
Supports
- OpenTelemetry log data model and log records
- Correlation of logs with trace and span context
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/signals/baggage/
Supports
- Baggage as propagated key-value context
- Separation of baggage from telemetry attributes
- Security risks when baggage crosses service boundaries
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/context-propagation/
Supports
- Context propagation across services and processes
- Injection, extraction, carriers, and propagators
- Context propagation as the basis for distributed tracing
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/instrumentation/
Supports
- Code-based and zero-code instrumentation routes
- Tradeoffs between automatic coverage and application-specific detail
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/resources/
Supports
- Resources as entities that produce telemetry
- Resource attributes and service identity
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/instrumentation-scope/
Supports
- Instrumentation scope as the identity of telemetry-producing code
- Scope association with spans, metrics, and log records
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/semantic-conventions/
Supports
- Common names and meanings for telemetry
- Conventions for operations, attributes, and metrics
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/concepts/sampling/
Supports
- Sampling as a trace-volume control
- Head and tail sampling decision points and tradeoffs
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/
Supports
- Collector responsibility for receiving, processing, and exporting telemetry
- Collector deployment and operational scope
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/collector/configuration/
Supports
- Receivers, processors, exporters, connectors, extensions, and service pipelines
- Requirement to enable configured components in service pipelines
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/otlp/
Supports
- OTLP as the OpenTelemetry telemetry transport protocol
- Protocol transport, request, response, and error semantics
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/demo/
Supports
- Official multi-service demonstration environment
- Demonstrations of instrumentation, signals, and Collector data flow
- https://opentelemetry.io/docs/security/
Supports
- Security guidance for OpenTelemetry end users and components
- Threat modeling and sensitive telemetry considerations
- https://github.com/magsther/awesome-opentelemetry
Supports
- Discovery of Jaeger, SigNoz, Tracetest, and OTelBin as OpenTelemetry ecosystem projects
- https://www.jaegertracing.io/docs/latest/
Supports
- Jaeger as an OpenTelemetry-compatible distributed tracing backend
- Trace visualization, service dependencies, storage, deployment, and operations
- https://signoz.io/docs/what-is-signoz/
Supports
- SigNoz as an OpenTelemetry-based observability tool
- Traces, metrics, logs, alerts, dashboards, and correlated views
- https://docs.tracetest.io/
Supports
- Trace-based integration and end-to-end testing with OpenTelemetry traces
- Assertions on spans, timing, transactions, and side effects
- https://www.otelbin.io/
Supports
- Browser-based editing, visualization, and validation of Collector configurations