Traces

OpenChoreo observability tracing module collects traces from applications that are instrumented to publish traces via OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP). The traces are enriched with Kubernetes metadata to support querying by OpenChoreo concepts (projects, components, environments, etc.).

Instrumenting Applications

Applications must be instrumented to send traces to the OpenTelemetry Collector. Configure your application to send OTLP traces to one of the following endpoints when using single-cluster mode:

Protocol	Endpoint
HTTP	http://opentelemetry-collector.openchoreo-observability-plane.svc.cluster.local:4318
gRPC	opentelemetry-collector.openchoreo-observability-plane.svc.cluster.local:4317

note

OpenTelemetry SDKs append /v1/traces to the HTTP endpoint automatically, so configure your application with the base URL above rather than including the path explicitly.

When using multi-cluster mode, the traces are published to the observability plane through the gateway ingress of the observability plane. Configure the applications accordingly.

Example: OpenTelemetry SDK Configuration (Go)

import (
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel"
    "go.opentelemetry.io/otel/exporters/otlp/otlptrace/otlptracehttp"
)

exporter, _ := otlptracehttp.New(ctx,
    otlptracehttp.WithEndpoint("opentelemetry-collector.openchoreo-observability-plane:4318"),
    otlptracehttp.WithInsecure(),
)

Querying Traces

The Observer API provides REST APIs for querying traces and spans using OpenChoreo concepts as filters. This can be accessed via the Backstage portal or the OpenChoreo MCP server. Observer handles the authentication and authorization based on OpenChoreo user identity.