Definition
A standard and ecosystem for collecting and exporting logs, traces, and metrics from instrumented applications.
- Also known as
- OTEL, OTel
Telemetry is the data an application emits about its behavior. OpenTelemetry is a standard and ecosystem for collecting and exporting that data, not another name for telemetry itself.
OpenTelemetry provides APIs, SDKs, instrumentation, and protocols for observability:
- Logs record events and their context.
- Traces follow work across operations and service calls.
- Metrics measure behavior such as request rates, latency, and resource usage.
Aspire’s dashboard can receive OpenTelemetry data. Participating .NET applications can configure it through service defaults; applications in other runtimes use their own OpenTelemetry libraries.
Instrumentation and exporters must be configured. Adding a service to an AppHost alone does not instrument all of its code.
Practical example
Instrument your API and export its telemetry to the Aspire dashboard to connect request traces with structured logs and performance metrics.
Aspire