naver Introduction to OpenTelemetry (feat. Collector (opens in new tab)
NAVER is transitioning its internal search monitoring platform, SEER, to an architecture built on OpenTelemetry and open-source standards to achieve a more scalable and flexible observability environment. By adopting a vendor-agnostic approach, the engineering team aims to unify the collection of metrics, logs, and traces while contributing back to the global OpenTelemetry ecosystem. This shift underscores the importance of standardized telemetry protocols in managing complex, large-scale service infrastructures. ### Standardizing Observability with OTLP * The transition focuses on the OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) as the primary standard for transmitting telemetry data across the platform. * Moving away from proprietary formats allows for a unified data model that encompasses metrics, traces, and logs, ensuring consistency across different services. * A standardized protocol simplifies the integration of various open-source backends, reducing the engineering overhead associated with supporting multiple telemetry formats. ### The OpenTelemetry Collector Pipeline * The Collector acts as a critical intermediary, decoupling the application layer from the storage backend to provide greater architectural flexibility. * **Receivers** are used to ingest data from diverse sources, supporting both OTLP-native applications and legacy systems. * **Processors** enable data transformation, filtering, and metadata enrichment (such as adding resource attributes) before the data reaches its destination. * **Exporters** manage the delivery of processed telemetry to specific backends like Prometheus for metrics or Jaeger for tracing, allowing for easy swaps of infrastructure components. ### Automated Management via OpenTelemetry Operator * The OpenTelemetry Operator is utilized within Kubernetes environments to automate the deployment and lifecycle management of the Collector. * It facilitates auto-instrumentation, allowing developers to collect telemetry from applications without manual code changes for every service. * The Operator ensures that the observability stack scales dynamically alongside the production workloads it monitors. ### Open-Source Contribution and Community * Beyond mere adoption, the NAVER engineering team actively participates in the OpenTelemetry community by sharing bug fixes and feature enhancements discovered during the SEER migration. * This collaborative approach ensures that the specific requirements of high-traffic enterprise environments are reflected in the evolution of the OpenTelemetry project. Adopting OpenTelemetry is a strategic move for organizations looking to avoid vendor lock-in and build a future-proof monitoring stack. For a successful implementation, teams should focus on mastering the Collector's pipeline configuration to balance data granularity with processing performance across distributed systems.