OpenTelemetry is the foundational, vendor-neutral observability layer beneath modern distributed systems. This two-day course puts developers, platform engineers, and SREs to work instrumenting applications and collecting telemetry with it. Attendees instrument applications for traces, metrics, and logs using open APIs and SDKs. They then route that telemetry through the Collector to any backend, avoiding vendor lock-in while delivering the visibility needed to understand microservices, distributed systems, and AI inference pipelines in production. Attendees leave with the skills to instrument and operate observability pipelines that align with modern cloud-native observability priorities.
Day one introduces the three pillars of observability: traces, metrics, and logs. Attendees work with OpenTelemetry SDKs using both automatic and manual instrumentation. Distributed tracing then gets in-depth coverage for the rest of the day. Attendees learn how context propagates across service boundaries, so a single request can be followed end-to-end through a distributed system.
Day two covers the other two signal types before turning to collection and standardization. Attendees collect metrics with the Metrics API, then correlate logs with traces and metrics using shared context. From there, they configure the Collector’s receiver, processor, and exporter pipeline to route telemetry to observability backends. The day closes with semantic conventions, which keep telemetry data consistent and portable across services and teams.
Through lecture and lab work, attendees instrument real applications and deploy real Collector pipelines. This builds practical experience across the full telemetry lifecycle, leaving attendees with the foundational skills to instrument applications and operate observability pipelines with confidence.
Who Should Attend
Developers, Platform Engineers, SREs, DevOps personnel
What Attendees Will Learn
Upon completing OpenTelemetry, attendees will be able to:
- Instrument Applications using OpenTelemetry SDKs and auto-instrumentation
- Generate Traces to capture distributed request flows across services
- Propagate Context across service boundaries for distributed tracing
- Collect Metrics using the OpenTelemetry Metrics API and instruments
- Correlate Logs with traces and metrics using OpenTelemetry context
- Deploy the OpenTelemetry Collector to receive, process, and export telemetry
- Configure Exporters to send telemetry data to observability backends
- Apply Semantic Conventions to produce consistent, portable telemetry data
Prerequisites
Basic programming proficiency is required; attendees unfamiliar with these concepts should complete “RX-M Python Foundation for Developers” or equivalent first. Familiarity with distributed systems and microservices concepts is helpful but not required.