Getting started with OpenTelemetry instrumentation: A practical playbook

OpenTelemetry has become an essential open source framework for standardizing telemetry data. In this beginner-friendly hands-on lab, you’ll walk through the journey of instrumenting an application with OpenTelemetry and sending metrics, logs, and traces to the Grafana LGTM stack (Loki for logs, Grafana for visualization, Tempo for traces, and Mimir for metrics).

You’ll learn common instrumentation approaches, such as adding application-level telemetry using the OpenTelemetry SDK, collecting basic infrastructure metrics with the OpenTelemetry Collector, and implementing cross-service communication with zero-code eBPF instrumentation. You’ll also apply practical customization techniques, such as enriching and sampling spans, tuning metrics, and adding your own signals when auto-instrumentation isn’t enough.

By instrumenting a sample application step by step, you’ll leave this lab with a clear roadmap for choosing the right OpenTelemetry instrumentation approach within your own environment.

By the end of the three hours, you will:

• Have a core understanding of the OpenTelemetry project and its key components
• Select the right level of instrumentation based on various use cases
• Understand how zero-code eBPF instrumentation helps reveal cross-service communication
• Instrument applications using OpenTelemetry SDKs
• Apply end-to-end instrumentation patterns to get started quickly and improve over time
• Send telemetry to the Grafana LGTM stack and understand how it’s used
• Customize telemetry to manage cost and noise

Requirements:

• Laptop with WiFi access 
• Linux/MacOS/WSL2
• Docker
• Docker compose
• Administrator or sudo access to build and run Docker containers

We will provide a docker-compose file containing what is needed for this lab.

This session is tailored for developers and SREs.