Unlocking the Power of OpenTelemetry and the LGTM Stack for Observability

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A single woodpecker could bring down civilization if builders constructed houses the way programmers build software. That’s because software, unlike physical structures, is often riddled with bugs. Fixing one can sometimes create five more, making the debugging process a never-ending cycle.

However, some bugs simply cannot be ignored — like the Apollo 13 oxygen tank explosion or a production server crashing and costing a company money.

This is where software observability comes in. By instrumenting, collecting, and visualizing telemetry data, developers can detect anomalies, optimize performance, and impress their bosses with insightful dashboards.

Thanks to OpenTelemetry and the LGTM stack, achieving this level of monitoring is easier than you might think.

Understanding the LGTM Stack

The LGTM stack consists of five key technologies:

1. OpenTelemetry (OTEL) — A vendor-agnostic framework that collects telemetry data (metrics, logs, and traces) from software in any programming language.
2. Grafana (G) — A front-end UI for visualizing collected data, setting up alerts, and creating dashboards.