OpenTelemetry tracing

OpenTelemetry is a collection of APIs, SDKs, and tools, which can be used to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) to help site reliability engineers (SRE) analyze their software’s performance and behavior.

Metrics provide runtime measurements of a system.
Logs provide recording of events.
Traces track the flow of an application through a system, enabling you to observe how applications are behaving. The flow normally incorporates several different application components, potentially running in different environments. Traces can provide insights into each individual application’s behavior and make it easier to understand where an application might be encountering issues, or performance problems.

[AIX, Linux, Windows] From IBM® MQ 9.4.0, queue managers running on AIX®, Linux®, or Windows can take part in traces, and integrate into an OpenTelemetry environment, by installing the IBM MQ OpenTelemetry tracing service.

[MQ 9.4.3 Jun 2025] [z/OS] From IBM MQ 9.4.3, queue managers on z/OS® can take part in traces, and integrate into an OpenTelemetry environment, using the capabilities of the z/OS platform.