OpenTelemetry Operator for Kubernetes

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OpenTelemetry Operator for Kubernetes

When installing the StackGen Agent onto your Kubernetes cluster, we also give the option to install the OpenTelemetry Operator for Kubernetes.

With the Operator on your cluster, it will auto-instrument your Kubernetes apps by injecting the OpenTelemetry instrumentation libraries into your app container.

This auto-instrumentation (via annotations) allow you enable traces without changing application code.

Auto Instrumenting via the OpenTelemetry Operator

• Install the StackGen Agent (steps here) with the following flag enabled in your values.yaml file:

oteloperator:
  enabled: true

warning

If you've already installed the agent, please uninstall it first: helm uninstall -n devopsnow devopsnow-agent and then re-install.

The OTel Operator chart installs CRDs, and Helm (out of best practice) only installs CRDs at install time; they are ignored during helm upgrade ...

• After the agent is installed, simply add the following annotation to your Pod (depending on the language of your app):

Java

instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-java: devopsnow/devopsnow-agent-otel-operator-instrumentation

NodeJS

instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-nodejs: devopsnow/devopsnow-agent-otel-operator-instrumentation

Python

instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-python: devopsnow/devopsnow-agent-otel-operator-instrumentation

info

Only the key changes per language. The value is the same (an Instrumentation spec which was created during Step (1) - pointing to your OpenTelemetry Collector)

For example, a sample NodeJS app may have the following annotation:

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
  ...
spec:
  ...
  template:
    metadata:
      annotations:
        instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-nodejs: "devopsnow/devopsnow-agent-otel-operator-instrumentation"
  ...

• Once rolled out, you'll begin seeing traces come into Grafana Explore under the Traces data source. You can also use the APM Insights dashboard in Grafana to get high level insights into your application traces.