Integrating with OpenTelemetry metrics

By default, the OpenTelemetry metrics appear as OpenTelemetry Custom Metrics on individual OpenTelemetry entities associated with the agent, host, process, or container from where they are collected.

You can find OpenTelemetry entities in the Analyze infrastructure view, in OpenTelemetry. You can also view the entities in Analytics > Infrastructure > OpenTelemetry type. For Event & Alerts or the Infrastructure Map, you can query the OpenTelemetry custom metrics by using the Dynamic Focus with either "entity.type:opentelemetry" or "entity.type:otel".

The OpenTelemetry Custom Metrics have the following metric types:

  • Gauge
  • Sum
  • Histogram

For more information about the metric types, see OpenTelemetry Protocol data model.

Instana supports OpenTelemetry metrics ingestion from both agent and backend. If the data is imported from the Instana agent, the metrics data can be further transformed into specific OpenTelemetry entities by using known OpenTelemetry Metrics Semantic Conventions and Resource Semantic Conventions (for example, "otel-host", "otel-process", and "otel-database").

The metric timestamp that is recorded for OpenTelemetry metrics is the timestamp of ingestion into Instana.

Creating custom dashboards with OpenTelemetry metrics

To create custom dashboards by using OpenTelemetry metrics, follow the steps:

  1. On the homepage of Instana UI, in the My custom dashboards section, click Create dashboard.

  2. In the Create new dashboard window, enter a dashboard name, and then click Create.

    You can enter a name that is easy to remember and has meaning to others in your organization.

  3. To create a widget, click Add widget.

  4. Select a widget type from the list of available widgets. For example, Apdex: Chart, Big Number, Chart: Pie, and so on. Then, click Next.

  5. Select Infrastructure & platforms as the data source for any widget that supports the data source field.

    For Infrastructure & platforms, a catalog is available for the Metric field. You might not find all metrics in the list. You can use the search bar to find a metric. In addition, you can filter the catalog on metrics by using the widget's filter.

    Entity tags and metric tags are two types of tags in OpenTelemetry.

    • Entity tags are the resource attributes of OpenTelemetry. To use entity tags, follow the steps:

      1. Click Add filter in the Filter section. In the Other section of the list, metric is displayed.
      2. Click otel. The OpenTelemetry resource attribute list is displayed.
      3. Select a resource attribute from the list. You can also search for a resource attribute in the list.

    • Metric tags are OpenTelemetry data point attributes associated exclusively with their OpenTelemetry metrics. To use metric tags, follow the steps:

      1. Click Add filter in the Filter section. In the Other section of the list, metric is displayed.
      2. Click metric. A list of tags is displayed.
      3. Select a tag from the list.

  6. From the Metric list, select a metric. To filter entity tags, you can use a filter or group to narrow down your metrics. You can select one of the metrics from the list or find the metric by using a filter or group to filter metric tags or entity tags to further refine your metric selection. After you select a metric, you can see the preview of a widget. Click Create, and then a new widget is displayed on the custom dashboard.

For more information about filtering specified entity tags and metric tags, see Group and Aggregation. In addition, you can select a type in the Other section to select OpenTelemetry for default OpenTelemetry plugin or select OTelDatabase for an OpenTelemetry database plugin.