OpenTelemetry in Practice by Richard Johnson

"OpenTelemetry in Practice"

OpenTelemetry in Practice offers a comprehensive, hands-on exploration of modern observability through the OpenTelemetry project, the vendor-neutral standard powering trace, metric, and log telemetry across today’s distributed systems. Beginning with a robust foundation, the book journeys through the history, architecture, and multi-language ecosystem of OpenTelemetry, unpacking its critical role within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) and its seamless integration into cloud-native workflows. Readers will discover not only the core components—including APIs, SDKs, and the powerful Collector—but also how OpenTelemetry interlinks with the broader landscape of cloud-native tools and platforms.

With practical emphasis, the book delves into advanced instrumentation techniques for tracing, metrics, and logging, exploring manual and automatic instrumentation, context propagation across languages, performance optimization, and robust integration strategies for both greenfield and legacy environments. In-depth chapters meticulously guide practitioners through distributed tracing, metric collection, and log processing, illuminating patterns for trace correlation, sampling strategies, service-level indicator analysis, and sophisticated root cause diagnostics. The design and operational best practices for the OpenTelemetry Collector, including development of custom processors and exporters, ensure readers gain production-grade expertise for managing large-scale, heterogeneous telemetry pipelines.

Beyond technical mastery, OpenTelemetry in Practice addresses enterprise adoption, governance, and emerging trends such as eBPF telemetry, machine learning-driven analytics, edge and IoT adaptations, and compliance for regulated industries. The book advocates for building mature observability cultures within organizations and equips readers with the knowledge to not only implement OpenTelemetry but also to contribute to its thriving open-source ecosystem. Whether you’re an engineer, architect, SRE, or leader driving cloud-native transformations, this authoritative guide empowers you to achieve resilient, insightful, and future-ready observability practices.