OpenTelemetry is an open-source cloud-native project that provides a framework for collecting and managing telemetry data (traces, metrics, and logs) from software applications. It helps developers observe and understand the behavior and performance of their systems.

OpenTelemetry offers a comprehensive, unified approach to observability, making it easier for organizations to monitor and manage their applications and infrastructure effectively.

Explore further KloudFuse documentation on OpenTelemetry:

Pillars of OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry is built on three core pillars:

Tracing

Traces track the journey of requests or transactions as they move through various components of a distributed system. Tracing helps you understand the flow and performance of these transactions.

Metrics

Metrics provide quantitative data about the performance and health of a system. They can include things like response times, error rates, and resource utilization.

Logging

Logs capture and store detailed records of events and errors that occur within an application. They provide context and help diagnose issues.

Other significant concepts

Instrumentation

Instrumentation adds code to an application to collect telemetry data. OpenTelemetry provides libraries and APIs for instrumenting code in various programming languages.

Context Propagation

OpenTelemetry uses context propagation to maintain trace context across different components of a system. This helps to correlate logs, metrics, and traces from the same transaction.

Exporters

Exporters are components that send telemetry data to backend systems or observability platforms for storage and analysis, and are collected by OpenTelemetry

Resource

Represents the entity from which the telemetry data originates, such as a particular server or container. It includes attributes that describe the entity.

Advantages of OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry has several advantages over earlier technologies:

Unified Approach

OpenTelemetry combines tracing, metrics, and logging into a single standard. Earlier technologies often treated these aspects separately, leading to fragmented observability solutions.

Vendor-Neutral

OpenTelemetry provides a standard format and protocol for telemetry data, which helps in avoiding vendor lock-in. This allows you to switch between observability backends without changing your instrumentation code.

Community-Driven

OpenTelemetry is supported by a large and active open-source community, which contributes to its ongoing development and improvement.

Broad Language Support

OpenTelemetry offers libraries and SDKs for a wide range of programming languages, making it versatile for various tech stacks.

OpenTelemetry Use Cases

Because KloudFuse uses OpenTelemetry, it enables your organization to realize these important functions:

Performance Monitoring

Track and measure the performance of applications and services to identify bottlenecks and optimize performance.

Error Detection and Diagnosis

Use traces and logs to quickly identify and diagnose issues within complex distributed systems.

Capacity Planning

Analyze metrics to understand resource usage and plan for scaling infrastructure.

Service Dependencies

Map and understand dependencies between different services and components in a microservices architecture.