What is AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry?
AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT) is a secure, production-ready open-source distribution of OpenTelemetry maintained by AWS. You use it to collect traces and metrics from your applications and from the underlying AWS resources, and to forward them to monitoring destinations.
ADOT builds on the vendor-neutral OpenTelemetry standard: you instrument your application once and then send the telemetry to several AWS monitoring solutions at the same time. AWS tests and security-validates the code and components of the distribution.
Core capabilities
- Automatic instrumentation: Trace collection for Java and Python applications and for AWS Lambda functions without manual instrumentation
- Multiple destinations at once: The same telemetry sent to AWS X-Ray, Amazon CloudWatch, Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus and OTLP destinations
- AWS resource metadata: Automatic collection of metadata for the underlying AWS resources
- Language coverage: Java, .NET, JavaScript, Go and Python
- Validated distribution: Security testing and validation of code and components by AWS
- AWS support: Production issues can be raised through AWS Support
Typical use cases
Correlating application and infrastructure monitoring: Traces from application code are collected together with metadata about the AWS resources in use and evaluated side by side.
Observing serverless workloads: AWS Lambda functions are instrumented automatically, so call chains across several functions and services remain traceable.
Vendor-neutral instrumentation: Teams instrument their applications to the OpenTelemetry standard and keep the freedom to change the monitoring destination later.
Benefits
- Vendor-neutral standard instead of proprietary agents
- Instrument once, route to several destinations
- Distribution tested and security-validated by AWS
- No charge for the distribution itself
Integration with innFactory
As an AWS Reseller, innFactory supports you with AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry: selecting and operating the collector, instrumenting your applications, connecting to CloudWatch, X-Ray or Prometheus, and building a consistent observability concept.
Typical Use Cases
Technical Specifications
Frequently Asked Questions
What is AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry?
AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry is a secure, production-ready open-source distribution of OpenTelemetry maintained by AWS. It collects traces and metrics from applications and AWS resources and forwards them to monitoring destinations.
Which programming languages are supported?
AWS states that AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry supports Java, .NET, JavaScript, Go and Python. Automatic instrumentation for trace collection is additionally available for Java and Python applications and for AWS Lambda functions.
Which destinations can receive the data?
ADOT sends data to AWS X-Ray, Amazon CloudWatch and Amazon Managed Service for Prometheus, as well as to destinations that support the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP). You instrument once and route the telemetry to several destinations in parallel.
How much does ADOT cost?
AWS states there is no cost for using AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry. You pay for the traces, logs and metrics sent to AWS, in other words the charges of the receiving services.
Is AWS support available?
For production issues related to AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry you can open a case through AWS Support. For feature requests and minor bugs, AWS points to the GitHub repositories of the respective component.
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