Zero-code

As ops you might want to add observability to one or more applications without having to edit the source. OpenTelemetry lets you quickly gain some observability for a service without having to use the OpenTelemetry API & SDK for code-based instrumentation.

Zero-code instrumentation adds the OpenTelemetry API and SDK capabilities to your application typically as an agent or agent-like installation. The specific mechanisms involved may differ by language, ranging from bytecode manipulation, monkey patching, or eBPF to inject calls to the OpenTelemetry API and SDK into your application.

Typically, zero-code instrumentation adds instrumentation for the libraries you’re using. This means that requests and responses, database calls, message queue calls, and so forth are what are instrumented. Your application’s code, however, is not typically instrumented. To instrument your code, you’ll need to use code-based instrumentation.

Additionally, zero-code instrumentation lets you configure the Instrumentation Libraries and exporters loaded.

You can configure zero-code instrumentation through environment variables and other language-specific mechanisms, such as system properties or arguments passed to initialization methods. To get started, you only need a service name configured so that you can identify the service in the observability backend of your choice.

Other configuration options are available, including:

• Data source specific configuration
• Exporter configuration
• Propagator configuration
• Resource configuration

Automatic instrumentation is available for the following languages:

• .NET
• Go
• Java
• JavaScript
• PHP
• Python