Integration of OpenTelemetry with L3AF

[sanfern]

Objective

Tracing, metrics, baggage, and logging are all supported by OpenTelemetry, with APIs, SDKs, OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP), and collectors being the core components. Additionally, OpenTelemetry offers instrumentation libraries and metrics exporters.

L3AF, on the other hand, exports metrics using the Prometheus framework.

This can be achieved in phases.

1. Exporting existing L3AF metrics in the OLTP or Prometheus format using OpenTelemetry Prometheus exporter.
2. Collecting system metrics using OpenTelemetry. (Future)

OTLP

This enables telemetry data to be exported from applications to various backends or observability systems. The exporter transforms telemetry data into a standardized format and sends it to a specified destination. It can be configured to send data to a variety of endpoints, such as logging systems, tracing systems, and metric systems.

The OTLP exporter is built on top of gRPC, a high-performance, open-source RPC framework that enables communication between distributed systems. This allows for efficient and reliable transmission of telemetry data.

The exporter supports various configuration options, such as the ability to set transport encryption, compression, and batching. It also provides a pluggable architecture that allows developers to extend the exporter to support custom endpoints.

Prometheus

The OpenTelemetry Metrics exporter for Prometheus works by converting the metrics data collected by OpenTelemetry into a format that can be understood by Prometheus. This format is known as the Prometheus exposition format, which is a text-based format that defines a set of rules for how metrics data should be exposed by applications and systems.

Capabilities OTLP Prometheus
General/API Push model Pull model
Aggregation Cumulative and Delta Cumulative
Memory Low Low
Status Stable Experimental
Data model OTLP protocol wide range and flexible. Key-Value
Protocol OTLP uses a standardized protocol HTTP based
Scalable Highly scalable Limited