Overview
OpenTelemetry (OTel) is an open-source observability framework that provides a single, standardized set of APIs, SDKs, and tools to collect metrics, logs, and traces from your applications.
Why OpenTelemetry?
Before OTel, teams used vendor-specific agents (e.g., Datadog, New Relic agents) which created vendor lock-in. OTel allows you to:
- Standardize data collection: Collect data once and send it to multiple backends.
- Avoid lock-in: Switch observability backends without changing application code.
- Unified instrumentation: Instrument once for metrics, traces, and logs.
Core Components
- OTel SDK: Libraries added to your application code.
- OTel Collector: A vendor-agnostic proxy that receives, processes, and exports telemetry data.
Example: Basic OTel Configuration (Collector)
receivers:
otlp:
protocols:
grpc:
http:
exporters:
prometheus:
endpoint: "0.0.0.0:8889"
service:
pipelines:
metrics:
receivers: [otlp]
exporters: [prometheus]Expected Result: The collector starts up and exposes metrics on port 8889 for Prometheus to scrape.
2026-04-10T10:00:00.000Z info service/collector.go: ... Everything is ready.