Lightstep makes Kubernetes observability seamless with OpenTelemetry and Ambassador

The goal of OpenTelemetry, ultimately, is to make observability a seamless and built-in feature of cloud-native software. However, there’s more to this than simply integrating with frameworks like gRPC or Spring Boot - observability works best when you combine data from a variety of sources. The OpenTelemetry Collector is an integral part of this, acting as a “swiss-army knife” that can integrate metrics, logs, and traces from a variety of sources and translate them as needed.

Lightstep and Ambassador

We’re happy to announce that we’ve worked with our friends at AmbassadorAmbassador to enable distributed trace collection for Ambassador as part of the K8s InitializerK8s Initializer through the OpenTelemetry Collector. This means that you can create an application-ready Kubernetes playground and pair it with Lightstep CommunityLightstep Community and our OpenTelemetry Launchers, making it easy to learn about and get started with OpenTelemetry.

You can spin up a Kubernetes sandbox environment with just a few clicks at the K8s InitializerK8s Initializer. Select the ingress controller configuration you want for your cluster, then select the option to configure OpenTelemetry for Distributed Tracing and insert your project access token - K8s Initializer takes care of the rest, generating all of the YAML required and giving you clear, step-by-step instructions on how to run it.

How does this all work, anyway?

Ambassador Edge Stack is powered by Envoy, which supports tracing via Zipkin. Since the OpenTelemetry Collector can merge traces together that were generated by almost any format, it can accept these Zipkin traces and convert them to the OpenTelemetry Protocol, which Lightstep natively accepts! We think this is a great example of the power of the Collector, and hope to see more integrations like this in the future.

Learn more

You can get started exploring OpenTelemetry and tracing in a Kubernetes sandbox environment with just a few clicks in the K8s Initializer. Check it out nowCheck it out now!

To learn more about OpenTelemetry and Kubernetes playgrounds, we recommend checking out the following resources:

• Learning Kubernetes: The Need for a Realistic PlaygroundLearning Kubernetes: The Need for a Realistic Playground

• OpenTelemetryOpenTelemetry

• Understanding OpenTelemetry and TracingUnderstanding OpenTelemetry and Tracing

If you have any questions about Lightstep Community (or want to chat about OpenTelemetry and observability), join the Lightstep Community DiscordCommunity Discord!

Interested in joining our team? See our open positions herehere.