As a .NET developer, you’re likely eyeing OpenTelemetry (OTel) to bring observability to your applications—tracing, metrics, and logs, all in one.
But the big question looms: Will OTel tank your app’s performance?
Let’s unpack this and get the conversation rolling!
At Qumulus Cloud Platform , we’ve been integrating OTel into our .NET apps, and here’s what we’ve learned:
Lightweight by Design: OTel’s .NET SDK is optimized for minimal overhead. With proper configuration, the performance hit is often negligible for most workloads.
Tunable Sampling: Dynamic or fixed sampling lets you control how much telemetry data is collected, balancing observability with performance.
Async Efficiency: OTel plays nicely with .NET’s async/await, ensuring non-blocking operations when exporting telemetry.
Real-World Testing: In our tests, CPU and memory overhead stayed under 2-5% for typical ASP.NET Core apps, but heavy tracing in high-throughput systems needs careful tuning.
That said, it’s not plug-and-play. ❗Misconfigured exporters or excessive instrumentation can add latency.
Our approach? Start small, profile rigorously, and leverage tools like Application Insights for seamless OTel integration. ✌
What’s your experience with OpenTelemetry in .NET?
Have you noticed performance impacts, or found killer optimization tricks? Drop your insights below—let’s geek out on observability! đź§
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