Telemetry

The Tracetest server generates internal observability trace data. You can use this data to track Tracetest test runs over time and gain observability of how the Tracetest server is behaving.

The Tracetest team uses an observability-driven development approach in developing the Tracetest server, capturing traces and then running Tracetest tests against it as part of the CI/CD process. You can read more about how we "eat our own dog food" in this blog post about the CI/CD configuration where we test Tracetest with Tracetest.

Configuring Tracetest Server Internal Telemetry

You can configure an exporter to send the trace data to an OpenTelemetry Collector and then store it safely in your trace data store for further historical analysis. View the supported trace data stores for more guidance on setting them up.

In the tracetest-config.yaml file, alongside the configuration of connecting Tracetest to the Postgres instance, you can also define a telemetry and server section.

With these two additional sections, you define an exporter where the Tracetest server's internal telemetry will be routed to. In the telemetry section, you define the endpoint of the OpenTelemetry Collector. And, in the server section you define which exporter the Tracetest server will use.

# tracetest-config.yaml
postgres:
# [...]

telemetry:
  exporters:
    collector:
      serviceName: tracetest
      sampling: 100 # 100%
      exporter:
        type: collector
        collector:
          endpoint: otel-collector:4317
          # Replace with your OpenTelemetry Collector endpoint

server:
  telemetry:
    exporter: collector
    applicationExporter: collector

note

Make sure to check what the service endpoint for the OpenTelemetry Collector in your infrastructure is. The example above is using otel-collector because that is the service name in Docker Compose. Your infrastructure might differ.