Practical OpenTelemetry in Javascript/Typescript
summary
Covers concrete JavaScript/TypeScript recipes: install the node SDK and get-node-auto-instrumentations to get library spans, use OTLP or console exporters, and disable noisy FS and verbose Express spans. Emphasizes adding resource attributes once per process, wrapping metrics in a meter class, enriching spans via a span enrichment helper, and using span events for structured logs. Explains sampling tradeoffs: head sampling vs tail sampling with ~5s tail delay, and recommends avoiding high‑cardinality metrics. Uses the Aspire dashboard for local debugging.
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chapters (20)
- 0:00Introduction to speaker
- 1:31Why observability matters
- 7:40The OpenTelemetry standard
- 10:44Understanding telemetry signals
- 13:03Deep dive into traces and spans
- 17:00The role of logs
- 19:32Web instrumentation challenges
- 21:13Auto-instrumentation
- 23:10Coded instrumentation
- 24:23Implementation and logging
- 26:33Twelve-factor apps and OTel
- 28:00Instrumentation libraries
- 30:39Resource attributes
- 33:25Metrics instrumentation
- 36:18Tracing and data enrichment
- 38:01Advanced span patterns
- 46:39Naming and documentation
- 51:09The Aspire dashboard
- 52:07Sampling strategies
- 58:22Future and conclusion
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