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What if I don't have OpenTelemetry installed?

No worries! You can get started with no code changes at all!

This page will explain getting started with OpenTelemetry:

  • Injecting auto instrumentation with no code changes.
  • Auto instrumentation with limited code changes.
  • Manual instrumentation with code changes.

You can also find more ways to instrument OpenTelemetry in their documentation.

You can install the OpenTelemetry Operator in any existing Kubernetes environment in under 5 minutes by running the following set of commands.

1. Install cert-manager​

This is required for the OpenTelemetry Operator to work.​

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/cert-manager/cert-manager/releases/download/v1.11.0/cert-manager.yaml

2. Install the OpenTelemetry Operator​

Traces will be generated and collected automatically.​

kubectl apply -f https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-operator/releases/latest/download/opentelemetry-operator.yaml

3. Create a file named otel-collector.yaml for the OpenTelemetry config​

otel-collector.yaml
apiVersion: opentelemetry.io/v1alpha1
kind: Instrumentation
metadata:
name: otel-instrumentation
spec:
exporter:
    endpoint: http://otel-collector:4317
propagators:
    - tracecontext
    - baggage
    - b3

---
apiVersion: opentelemetry.io/v1alpha1
kind: OpenTelemetryCollector
metadata:
name: otel
spec:
config: |
  receivers:
    otlp:
      protocols:
        grpc:
        http:
  processors:
    batch:
        timeout: 100ms
  exporters:
    otlp/tracetest:
      endpoint: tracetest:4317
      tls:
        insecure: true
  service:
    pipelines:
        traces:
            receivers: [otlp]
            processors: [batch]
            exporters: [otlp/tracetest]

You configure 2 separate things:

1. The Instrumentation, which is an init-container that will run on any pod you explictly mark (see step 5).​

2. The OpenTelemetry collector, which will collect the traces from the init-container and send them to Tracetest, and/or your trace data store.​

What's amazing here is that you can add other exporters to this config file to send the traces to other services as explained here.

4. Apply the otel-collector.yaml config file​

Terminal
kubectl apply -f otel-collector.yaml

5. Update any service you want to instrument​

Use the following annotations as seen in the OpenTelemetry docs:

  • .NET: instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-dotnet: "true"
  • Java: instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-java: "true"
  • Node.js: instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-nodejs: "true"
  • Python: instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-python: "true"
note

Add an environment variable named SERVICE_NAME to your service so that you can later identify it in the tests.

apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: Deployment
metadata:
name: your-service
spec:
replicas: 1
template:
  annotations:
    instrumentation.opentelemetry.io/inject-nodejs: 'true'
spec:
    containers:
      var:
        - name: SERVICE_NAME
          value: 'your-service'

This will automatically instrument your service with OpenTelemetry and send the traces to the OpenTelemetry collector.

Apply the changes and you're ready! You can start writing integration and end-to-end tests with trace-based testing!

note

Check the official OpenTelemetry docs explaining how to use the OpenTelemetry Operator.

We suggest you go back to and install Tracetest!

Jump back to the installation guide once you have OpenTelemetry installed.