Introduction

OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework for cloud-native software, providing a set of APIs, libraries, agents, and instrumentation to collect metrics, logs, and traces. It’s a powerful tool for gaining insight into distributed systems and performance bottlenecks.

In this article, we’ll walk through what OpenTelemetry is, why you should use it, and how to set it up step-by-step.

Why OpenTelemetry?

  • Unified Observability: One standard for logs, metrics, and traces.
  • Vendor-Neutral: Export data to systems like Prometheus, Jaeger, or commercial APMs.
  • Extensible: Support for multiple languages and platforms.

Step-by-Step Guide

Step 1: Install the Collector

Use the OpenTelemetry Collector to receive, process, and export telemetry data.

docker run --rm -p 4317:4317 -v "$(pwd)/otel-config.yaml":/otel-config.yaml otel/opentelemetry-collector:latest --config=/otel-config.yaml

Sample otel-config.yaml:

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
      http:

exporters:
  logging:
    loglevel: debug
  jaeger:
    endpoint: "http://localhost:14250"
    tls:
      insecure: true

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [logging, jaeger]

Step 2: Instrument Your Application

For example, in Python:

pip install opentelemetry-api opentelemetry-sdk opentelemetry-exporter-otlp

Add this to your app:

from opentelemetry import trace
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace import TracerProvider
from opentelemetry.sdk.trace.export import BatchSpanProcessor
from opentelemetry.exporter.otlp.proto.grpc.trace_exporter import OTLPSpanExporter

trace.set_tracer_provider(TracerProvider())
span_processor = BatchSpanProcessor(OTLPSpanExporter())
trace.get_tracer_provider().add_span_processor(span_processor)

tracer = trace.get_tracer(__name__)

with tracer.start_as_current_span("main-span"):
    print("Tracing with OpenTelemetry")

Step 3: Visualize

Use Jaeger or other backend systems to visualize traces and metrics.

docker run -d --name jaeger -e COLLECTOR_ZIPKIN_HOST_PORT=:9411 -p 16686:16686 jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest

Then go to http://localhost:16686 to view.

Limitations

  • Steep learning curve for full setup.
  • Configuration varies per language and backend.
  • Requires consistent context propagation.

Conclusion

OpenTelemetry is a powerful way to achieve deep observability. Start small by sending basic traces and expand from there.