OpenTelemetry

Overview

OpenTelemetry (OTel) standardizes telemetry collection for traces, metrics, and logs across languages and platforms.

OTel Building Blocks

• Instrumentation libraries
• SDKs and auto-instrumentation
• OTel Collector pipeline
• Exporters to observability backends

flowchart TD
    A[Application] --> B[OTel SDK]
    B --> C[OTel Collector]
    C --> D[Tracing Backend]
    C --> E[Metrics Backend]
    C --> F[Logging Backend]

Practical Example

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
exporters:
  prometheus:
  jaeger:
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [jaeger]

Production Example

Organizations adopt OTel to avoid vendor lock-in and keep telemetry pipelines consistent across polyglot services.

Common Pitfalls

• Inconsistent semantic conventions between teams
• Over-instrumentation causing overhead
• Missing collector scaling and resilience planning

Key Takeaways

• OpenTelemetry unifies telemetry instrumentation strategy.
• Collector pipelines increase flexibility and portability.
• Governance is needed for naming and signal quality.