Using OpenTelemetry with Dynatrace

OpenTelemetry is an open standard for the collection and exchange of telemetry data. It enables applications to record and create relevant data points and publish them to backends (such as Dynatrace) for further aggregation and analysis.

With OpenTelemetry, you can create, collect, transform, and publish the following telemetry signals in a fully interoperable and vendor-agnostic fashion:

  • Traces
  • Metrics
  • Logs

For this purpose, OpenTelemetry provides a set of SDKs and API libraries for a wide range of modern and popular programming languages (such as Java, JavaScript, C++, and more).

Dynatrace has been an active supporter and a key contributor of OpenTelemetry from the beginning of the project. A large number of Dynatrace technologies already support OpenTelemetry natively and Dynatrace is committed to further extending that coverage.

Native OTLP support with Dynatrace

OpenTelemetry can be ingested using the following services:

Collector

Export to the Collector if you want an intermediate service layer for data collection, protocol conversion, or central post-processing of your telemetry data. You can also use the Collector to send your data to more than one backend at the same time.

otlp

See Dynatrace Collector and Collector use cases for more details.

ActiveGate

Central collection gateway to the Dynatrace backend, providing OTLP endpoints for OpenTelemetry data.

  • Requires an access token for authentication and a secure connection using TLS
  • For hosts monitored by OneAgent, it requires manual data enrichment to ensure proper host-mapping and use of allocated DDUs
  • With a single point of ingest, network traffic and management are simplified and centralized

otlp

See Export to ActiveGate for more details.

OneAgent (traces-only)

If you have OneAgent deployed, you can also export traces to its local-only endpoint. This provides a convenient ingest interface with automatic request enrichment, no need for explicit authentication, but has the following limitations:

  • Only works with localhost connections
  • Does not work with containerized setups
  • Only accepts traces (no metrics or logs for now)
  • Requires the EEC to be enabled

otlp

See Export to OneAgent for more details.

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