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OpenTelemetry

Overview

OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework for collecting, processing, and exporting telemetry data (traces, metrics, and logs) from cloud-native applications. Within KubeDNA, OpenTelemetry provides deep visibility into the behavior and performance of distributed systems.

✅ Current Implementation

In the current release of KubeDNA, the OpenTelemetry Operator is deployed as the foundational component for enabling telemetry collection across the cluster.

Path to install:
[Selected Cluster] > Components > OpenTelemetry

  • The deployment includes the OpenTelemetry Operator only.
  • Users can manually create OpenTelemetryCollector instances to define pipelines for collecting and exporting telemetry data.
  • Best suited for teams that want to integrate custom exporters (e.g., Jaeger, Prometheus, or OpenSearch) manually.
  • Requires configuration of receivers, processors, and exporters via CRDs.

🔜 Upcoming Release – Full OpenTelemetry Stack

In the next release, KubeDNA will support a fully integrated, ready-to-use OpenTelemetry stack, offering a complete observability solution out-of-the-box.

🚀 Key Features:

  • Auto-instrumentation Support:
  • Native support for tracing libraries in Java, Python, Go, Node.js, etc.
  • Configurable injection for pods and services via annotations
  • Predefined Collectors:
  • Ready-to-use OpenTelemetryCollector pipelines for logs, traces, and metrics
  • Forwarding to OpenSearch, Jaeger, or Prometheus enabled by default
  • KubeDNA Metrics Integration:
  • Native telemetry from Kubernetes control plane, workloads, and platform components
  • Visual Dashboards:
  • Integration with OpenSearch Dashboards, Grafana, and Jaeger UI for trace exploration
  • Multi-tenancy & RBAC:
  • Role-based pipeline configuration and tenant-isolated telemetry streams

🎯 Use Cases

  • Distributed tracing of microservices
  • Monitoring performance bottlenecks
  • End-to-end transaction tracing
  • Correlating logs, metrics, and traces in a single interface

📌 Notes

  • Future updates will include UI-driven collector configuration and telemetry profile templates.
  • Integration with GitOps (via GitLab, GitHub, ArgoCD) will allow declarative pipeline updates.
  • Support for telemetry retention and filtering policies will also be added.