OpenTelemetry Has a Free Observability Framework for Traces Metrics and Logs

#opentelemetry #devops #observability #opensource

OpenTelemetry is the CNCF standard for observability. It provides a single set of APIs, SDKs, and tools for traces, metrics, and logs — vendor-neutral.

What You Get for Free

Traces — distributed tracing across services
Metrics — counters, histograms, gauges
Logs — structured logging with context
Auto-instrumentation — many frameworks instrumented automatically
Collector — receive, process, export telemetry
Vendor-neutral — export to Jaeger, Prometheus, Datadog, Grafana
11 languages — Java, Python, Go, Node.js, .NET, Rust...

Auto-Instrument Node.js

const { NodeSDK } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-node');
const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require('@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http');

const sdk = new NodeSDK({
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({ url: 'http://localhost:4318/v1/traces' }),
});
sdk.start();

All HTTP requests, database calls, and framework operations are traced automatically.

OTel Collector Config

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
      http:
exporters:
  jaeger:
    endpoint: localhost:14250
service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      exporters: [jaeger]