Learn OpenTelemetry the practical way.
A hands-on course on traces, metrics, logs, the Collector, and instrumentation — built directly from the official OpenTelemetry documentation.
Foundations
Start here — what OpenTelemetry is and why it existsWhat is OpenTelemetry?
The vendor-neutral observability framework — what it is, and importantly, what it is not.
The three signals
Traces, metrics, and logs — what each one answers, and why you want all three correlated.
Architecture: API, SDK & OTLP
How the pieces fit — the API you code against, the SDK that does the work, and OTLP on the wire.
The signals, in depth
Traces, metrics, logs and how context ties them togetherTraces & spans
Spans, span context, attributes, events, and status — the anatomy of a distributed trace.
Metrics & instruments
Counters, gauges, and histograms — choosing the right instrument and shaping data with views.
Context propagation & baggage
How a trace survives a network hop — propagators, the W3C traceparent header, and baggage.
Collecting & shipping data
Instrumentation, the Collector, and getting production-readyInstrumentation: zero-code & manual
Get telemetry flowing fast with zero-code agents, then enrich it with targeted manual spans.
The OpenTelemetry Collector
A vendor-agnostic proxy for telemetry — receivers, processors, exporters, pipelines, and deployment.
Semantic conventions
The shared vocabulary that makes telemetry portable — standard names for attributes and resources.
Sampling strategies
Keep the signal, drop the cost — head vs. tail sampling and how to choose a rate.