What is OpenTelemetry?
OpenTelemetry is the open-source, market-standard way to instrument your code. It helps collect telemetry data like traces, spans, and logs, which can be sent to platforms like Otelic.com for analysis and insights.
1. What Does OpenTelemetry Do?
OpenTelemetry provides a standard way to instrument your application to generate high-quality telemetry data. It focuses on creating traces and spans, as well as capturing logs. This data helps you understand how your app behaves.
2. How Does OpenTelemetry Work?
OpenTelemetry instruments your application code. Many libraries like MongoDB, SQL databases, and Redis are already instrumented with OpenTelemetry. By using their official SDKs, your app can automatically create traces, spans, and logs without additional work.
3. Does OpenTelemetry Store Data?
No, OpenTelemetry is focused only on collecting data. It sends telemetry data to a hosting platform like Otelic.com, where you can browse logs, set up alerts, and get insights about your app.
4. What Are Traces and Spans?
Traces show how a request moves through your app. Spans are the smaller units of work within those traces. Together, they help you understand what happened and where issues might occur.
5. Why is OpenTelemetry the Market Standard?
OpenTelemetry is a project under the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), which also hosts Kubernetes. It’s backed by companies like Google, Microsoft, and AWS. This broad support makes it the default way to instrument code across the industry.
6. How Does OpenTelemetry Help Developers?
OpenTelemetry ensures that all teams use the same standard for collecting telemetry data. This improves consistency, reduces effort, and ensures high-quality traces and spans. Developers can focus on building features instead of creating custom solutions for observability.
7. How Do I Get Started?
Start by instrumenting your app with OpenTelemetry. Once the telemetry data is collected, send it to Otelic.com. With Otelic, you can browse logs and traces, set up alerts, and gain actionable insights into your application.