What is OpenTelemetry?
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open standard for observability. It provides APIs and SDKs to generate, collect, and export traces, metrics, and logs from your applications.
Key concepts
- Trace: records the path of a request through the system.
- Span: unit of work within a trace.
- Metric: numerical measurement (response time, CPU usage).
- Exporter: sends data to a backend (Jaeger, Zipkin, Datadog).
Basic Node.js setup
import { NodeSDK } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-node';
import { ConsoleSpanExporter } from '@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node';
const sdk = new NodeSDK({
traceExporter: new ConsoleSpanExporter(),
});
sdk.start();
Auto-instrumentation
npm install @opentelemetry/instrumentation-http
npm install @opentelemetry/instrumentation-express
Auto-instrumentation captures spans for HTTP requests, Express routes, database calls, etc. without modifying your code.
Benefits
- Standardization: same format for traces, metrics, and logs.
- Vendor-neutral: switch backends without code changes.
- End-to-end visibility in distributed systems.
- Performance issue debugging.
Want observability with OpenTelemetry? At Vynta we instrument your applications.