Cisco AppDynamics Community

Erwan.Paccard · ‎04-01-2022

What do I need to know about OTel and using it with AppDynamics?

Get up to speed on OpenTelemetry and how AppDynamics will support it, expanding telemetry data sources for our advanced analytics, AI/ML, and troubleshooting capabilities.

In this article…

About the technology

What is OpenTelemetry (OTel)?
I understand what OTel is, but what is it not?

How is AppDynamics supporting OTel?

How do I access OTel capabilities?
I thought AppDynamics could already collect metrics, events, logs and traces/BTs?
What’s changing, a...
How much OTel data can I get?

Additional Resources

ABOUT THE TECHNOLOGY

What is OpenTelemetry (OTel)?

Owned by the Linux Foundation, OpenTelemetry is a vendor-neutral standard for collecting telemetry data for applications, their supporting infrastructures and services.

Read the details in the What is OpenTelemetry (OT) and why should you care? post on the AppDynamics Blog.

TIP | See additional resources below. And don’t forget to subscribe if you want notifications of updates to this FAQ (click the 3-dot menu, then “Subscribe”)

I understand what OTel is—but what is it not?

While OpenTelemetry provides a solution similar to AppDynamics Agents, there are some differences and common misconceptions:

It is not only APM
OpenTelemetry started as a standard for cloud native application monitoring, but the scope quickly expanded. With special interest groups looking into “Client Side Telemetry” and eBPF, OTel is turning into a cross-cutting standard for telemetry spanning from Digital End-User Monitoring (DEM), over APM, DB and Infrastructure Observability.
It is OTel
OpenTelemetry is the successor to OpenTracing (OT) and OpenCensus, so to avoid confusion, the community uses OTel as an abbreviation.
“Agent” can mean different things
In the context of OpenTelemetry, you will find the term ‘Agent’ being used for two different things:

A collector running on the same host as the app (sidecar)
An auto-instrumentation agent which is equivalent to AppDynamics agents

Agents are not the only way to collect telemetry
It is not mandatory to use an agent for auto-instrumentation OpenTelemetry. An application can support OTel natively via an SDK, and there is no need to inject an agent. Actually, one of the goals is to make every library and application observable out-of-the box by having them call the APIs directly.

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APPDYNAMICS AND OPENTELEMETRY

What is AppDynamics doing to support OTel?

Once ingested, OpenTelemetry data will be a first-class citizen, treated as any data coming from our own agents, on which you can have health rules, flowmaps, and more.

Starting in Spring 2022, we will cover IT Ops use cases for health assessment and alerting. Expect additional use cases in due course, too.

How do I access AppDynamics OTel capabilities?

Depending on your region, you’ll see a new OTel tab in the menu bar once you upgrade to AppDynamics version 22.3.

NOTE | Please check the current list of AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry-supported regions.

To use AppDynamics OTel, you will need to:

Configure your OTel collectors
Use the generated API key with the Endpoint to connect to the AppDynamics Controller
If you are considering ingesting OpenTelemetry data with the AppDynamics Java and Node.js Agents, they should be updated to the latest version.

NOTE: Some language-specific SDKs can export the OTel traces directly (without the need for the separate OTel collector in-between) to the telemetry backend, given the required OTel resource attributes are supported by those exporters (see this document). The AppD-specific telemetry backend, as part of the "AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry" feature, has the support for the following OTLP-specific implementations. If you would like to report the OTel traces directly from the particular OTel Language-specific SDK, it's possible to specify the required resource attributes and achieve that. If you need further guidance on this particular use case, please contact AppD Support and mention this particular use case.

I thought AppDynamics could already collect metrics, events, logs and traces/BTs?
So, what's changing and why?

With the OTel standard, you can now leverage from more telemetry data sources to enrich AppDynamics' advanced analytics, AI/ML, and troubleshooting capabilities.

How much OTel data can I get?

Please read this AppDynamics Documentation for more info: Licenses and Entitlements.

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Additional Resources

Documentation:

AppDynamics Blog posts:

Demonstration Video and product information: AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry video

Live Webinar: Embracing AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry (April 27, 2022)

Sebastian.Perna · ‎10-20-2022

Hi! Very interesting. Is it possible to collect traces of all the transactions as Jaeger does and see them in the controller UI?

Regards

Claudia.Landivar · ‎10-24-2022

Hello, @Sebastian.Perna

I understand that this functionality is not available at this time. If we discover additional information, we will post here. Please don't hesitate to elaborate on your use case, though!

Regards,
Claudia Landivar, Community Manager & Editor

Sly.Gryphon · ‎11-17-2022

The video link "AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry video" does not work / is not available. It takes me to a Cisco log in screen, so the video is probably there, just not public. My AppDynamics log in does not work, and I don't have a Cisco login.

Claudia.Landivar · ‎11-21-2022

Hello, @Sly.Gryphon

Thanks for alerting us to the issue you experienced. I've corrected the link to the AppDynamics for OpenTelemetry video, so you should now have no trouble reaching this public-facing page. You definitely don't need special access permissions. If it doesn't work for any reason, please let us know! And thanks again for reaching out.

Claudia Landivar | Community Manager & Editor