Observability with OpenTelemetry: Logs, Metrics, and Traces

Learn how OpenTelemetry helps developers understand distributed applications through logs, metrics, and traces.

Modern applications often consist of APIs, databases, background workers, caches, and external services. When something goes wrong, traditional logs may not provide enough information to understand the complete request flow. Observability combines logs, metrics, and distributed traces to provide a clearer picture of application behavior. OpenTelemetry provides a vendor-neutral framework for collecting and exporting telemetry data. In .NET applications, developers can instrument HTTP requests, database operations, messaging systems, and custom code. Traces show request flow, metrics reveal resource usage and latency, and logs provide diagnostic details. A well-designed observability setup makes production troubleshooting faster and helps teams identify performance problems earlier. Teams should also avoid collecting unnecessary sensitive information and define useful telemetry standards from the beginning.