Lightstep participates in AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry

As co-founders and active contributors to the OpenTelemetryOpenTelemetry project, Lightstep is excited to participate in the GA release of AWS Distro for OpenTelemetryAWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT) for tracing for exporters supporting Java, .Net, Python, Go, and JavaScript. AWS has validated Lightstep's use of the ADOT OTLP ExporterADOT OTLP Exporter, OpenTelemetry's native protocol, to send telemetry to Lightstep without requiring any custom plugins or integrations. Now it's even easier for Lightstep customersLightstep customers who use OpenTelemetry on AWS to identify and resolve issues in production code.

Below you can see a side by side example of trace data sent to AWS X-Ray and Lightstep at the same time using the ADOT OTLP Exporter:

OpenTelemetry: An instrumentation best-practice

OpenTelemetry is a collection of tools, APIs, and SDKs that can be used to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data for analysis in order to understand a system's performance and behavior. OpenTelemetry provides everything an engineer would need to build a telemetry system, except for the final step of the data storage or data analysis tool. By providing a standardized data format for distributed traces and metrics data, OpenTelemetry eliminates the need for vendor-specific integrations. As an open standard, OpenTelemetry means Lightstep customers avoid lock-in and can build future proof architectures critical for ever changing development environments.

AWS OpenTelemetry Distro: A shortcut advantage.

Most of the configuration in OpenTelemetry revolves around which backend you are going to send data to. Distros package up the set of plugins and configuration options needed to connect OpenTelemetry to a particular back end. The only difference between using a downstream distro and using OpenTelemetry directly is the amount of configuration you may need to do. We have more articles on the value of distros herehere.

The AWS Distro for OpenTelemetryAWS Distro for OpenTelemetry collects telemetry from your AWS resources and managed services, so you can correlate application performance data with underlying infrastructure data, reducing the mean time to problem resolution. Use AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry to instrument your applications running on many AWS services.

Lightstep, AWS and OpenTelemetry

The rapidly expanding engineering trend towards building systems with microservices and cloud technologies has made monitoring and observing the underlying systems more challenging. The OpenTelemetry project aims to reduce complexity and the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry simplifies adoption of the standard.

Lightstep works with OpenTelemetry out of the box - simply point the collector at Lightstep, and add your access token. But now, with the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry, you have support from both of us for troubleshooting and performance analysis of AWS-hosted application services and their underlying cloud infrastructure.

Next Steps

• The easiest way to try OpenTelemetry is with a free community accountfree community account from Lightstep.

• Our OpenTelemetry DocsOpenTelemetry Docs are great for software teams considering adopting OpenTelemetry.

• Learn from our customersour customers who use distributed tracing every day to determine what caused that unplanned change in their business critical applications.

• Explore more OpenTelemetry blog postsOpenTelemetry blog posts.

Contact us if you'd like to learn more or know what's planned for future integrations or know more about OpenTelemetry.