OpenTelemetry Setup

Instrument Node services with traces and context propagation.

otel

Detailed Description

OpenTelemetry gives a standard way to collect traces, metrics, and context across Node services. Auto-instrumentation can capture HTTP, database, Redis, and other common library spans.

Use it when a request crosses multiple services or dependencies. Traces show where time is spent, which downstream call is slow, and how failures propagate through the system.

Mental Model

request
-> root span
-> db/cache/http spans
-> exporter

When To Use

->Debug distributed latency
->See which downstream dependency is slow
->Correlate logs and traces

Tools: @opentelemetry/sdk-node, Jaeger, Tempo, Honeycomb

otel.js

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