OpenTelemetry is an open-source standard for collecting metrics, logs, and traces and providing that data to third parties for ingestion. Since OpenTelemetry is an open-source standard, you can use a variety of disparate technologies to generate data for OpenTelemetry to consume, and this data can be displayed in numerous tools. By using Open Telemetry, you can eliminate vendor lock-in for application visibility.

I will review the following general concepts during this session: logs, traces, and metrics. I will provide a deep dive into the open telemetry collector and explore how pipelines within the collector function.

During this session, we will use a few examples to cover these topics. I will set up both .NET and JVM-based applications, which will produce metrics, logs, and traces. I will deploy a .NET application to Azure and a Java application to AWS. Data from these applications will be ingested into an Open Telemetry collector. Finally, I will create a Grafana Dashboard to display and analyze the metrics data.

After attending this session, you should have a solid understanding of the concepts surrounding OpenTelemetry. Furthermore, you should be able to set up OpenTelemetry in your applications to get real-time visibility and monitoring without vendor lock-in.