OpenTelemetry 1.21: Observability Standard Evolution

Introduction

OpenTelemetry 1.21, released on August 28, 2024, advances the observability standard with enhanced instrumentation, improved collector capabilities, better integration, and expanded language support. This release makes OpenTelemetry more powerful and accessible for comprehensive observability.

Instrumentation Enhancements

• Auto-instrumentation improvements provide better automatic instrumentation for applications.
• Manual instrumentation enhancements enable more flexible manual instrumentation.
• Library support expands support for more libraries and frameworks.
• Performance optimizations reduce overhead of instrumentation.

Collector Improvements

1. Processor enhancements provide more powerful data processing capabilities.
2. Exporter improvements enable better integration with various backends.
3. Receiver enhancements enable better collection of telemetry data.
4. Pipeline improvements enable more flexible data processing pipelines.

Integration Capabilities

• Backend integration improvements provide better integration with observability backends.
• Kubernetes enhancements enable better integration with Kubernetes.
• Service mesh integration enables integration with service meshes.
• CI/CD integration enables integration with CI/CD pipelines.

Language Support

• New languages support expands support for additional programming languages.
• Existing languages improvements enhance support for existing languages.
• SDK enhancements provide better SDK capabilities.
• Documentation improvements make OpenTelemetry more accessible.

Getting Started

# Install OpenTelemetry Collector
kubectl apply -f https://raw.githubusercontent.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/main/bundle.yaml

Example OpenTelemetry Collector configuration:

receivers:
  otlp:
    protocols:
      grpc:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4317
      http:
        endpoint: 0.0.0.0:4318

processors:
  batch:

exporters:
  otlp:
    endpoint: jaeger:4317

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
      receivers: [otlp]
      processors: [batch]
      exporters: [otlp]

Summary

OpenTelemetry 1.21 continues to evolve as the observability standard, providing teams with powerful and flexible observability capabilities.