GopherCon 2020: Ted Young - The Fundamentals of OpenTelemetry

Summary

In this informative talk, Ted Young introduces Open Telemetry, an observability platform for monitoring distributed systems. He explains the concept of telemetry, Open Telemetry's extensible components, and its role in emitting signals like distributed tracing and metrics. Young demonstrates how to instrument code with Open Telemetry, emphasizing context propagation for efficient tracing. He also discusses the importance of standardization in the telemetry ecosystem and provides practical examples and resources for getting started with Open Telemetry in various programming languages.

Takeaways

• 📚 Open Telemetry is defined as an observability platform with extensible components for monitoring distributed systems.
• 🌐 It unifies signals like distributed tracing, metrics, and system resources, providing the context needed to correlate them.
• 🛠️ Open Telemetry includes a data processing facility for data format transformation, manipulation, and distribution to multiple consumers.
• 🔌 The Open Telemetry SDK is installed in every service of a deployment, implementing the Open Telemetry API for instrumentation.
• 🔗 Open Telemetry Collector is a data pipelining service that can translate between various formats like OTLP, Zipkin, Jaeger, and Prometheus.
• 🏆 Open Telemetry focuses on standardization for describing distributed systems in cloud environments, rather than standardizing data analysis tools.
• 📝 It is designed via specification, a language-neutral document that allows building consistent implementations across different software ecosystems.
• 🔧 Open Telemetry can be easily installed and configured with minimal code or command line arguments, supporting languages like Java, JavaScript, Python, and Go.
• 🔑 Context propagation is central to Open Telemetry's architecture, allowing the flow of execution and metadata across services in a transaction.
• 📈 The use of semantic conventions in Open Telemetry helps standardize the description of system components for better data analysis and understanding.
• 🛑 Baggage headers in Open Telemetry allow for the propagation of arbitrary key-value pairs, useful for passing correlations without additional system load.

Q & A

What is the definition of telemetry according to the Cambridge Dictionary?

Telemetry is defined as the science or process of collecting information about objects that are far away and sending the information somewhere electronically.

What is Open Telemetry and what does it aim to achieve?

Open Telemetry is an observability platform consisting of extensible components that can be used together or apart. It aims to standardize the language for describing how distributed computers operate in a cloud environment, allowing for better observability and analysis tools without the need to reinvent the telemetry ecosystem.

What are the three main types of signals emitted by Open Telemetry?

Open Telemetry emits distributed tracing, metrics, and system resources as its main types of signals.

What is the role of the Open Telemetry SDK in a service?

The Open Telemetry SDK, referred to as the client, implements the Open Telemetry API. It allows applications, frameworks, and libraries to use this instrumentation API to describe the work they are doing and then sends the data to a data pipelining service called the collector.

What is the purpose of the Collector in Open Telemetry?

The Collector in Open Telemetry is a data pipelining service that receives data from the SDK and can translate between various data formats, including OTLP, Zipkin, Jaeger, and Prometheus.

Why does Open Telemetry not provide its own backend or analysis tool?

Open Telemetry does not provide its own backend or analysis tool because its primary focus is on standardization efforts for describing distributed systems in cloud environments, rather than standardizing data analysis methods.

How does Open Telemetry ensure consistency and interoperability across different implementations?

Open Telemetry is designed via a specification, which is a language-neutral document that describes everything needed to build an implementation of Open Telemetry, ensuring consistency and interoperability.

What is context propagation in Open Telemetry and why is it important?

Context propagation is the core concept behind Open Telemetry's architecture. It involves sending the contents of the context object as metadata on network requests, allowing the flow of execution and key-value pairs to be tracked across services, which is essential for distributed tracing.

What are the primary HTTP headers used for trace context in Open Telemetry?

The primary HTTP headers used for trace context in Open Telemetry are 'traceparent' and 'tracestate', which contain information about the trace and span IDs, as well as any additional implementation-specific details.

How can baggage headers be used in Open Telemetry to improve observability?

Baggage headers in Open Telemetry allow users to pass arbitrary key-value pairs that can be used for correlation purposes. They can be propagated along with the context and used to index spans with additional metadata, such as project IDs, to identify usage patterns or troubleshoot issues.

What are semantic conventions in Open Telemetry and why are they important?

Semantic conventions in Open Telemetry are standard resources and trace attributes used to describe a system. They are important because they help analysis tools understand the information by providing a standardized way of reporting data, such as hostname, operating system, and other system characteristics.