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Observability | OpenTelemetry | Grafana Correlation
From Chaos To Order: Telemetry Correlation with Grafana and OpenTelemetry
The Quest for the Holy Grail of Observability
Observability is critical to modern distributed systems, enabling developers and operations teams to gain deep insights into system behavior. OpenTelemetry, an open-source observability framework, standardizes the collection of telemetry data, including metrics, logs, and traces, across various services and platforms.
One of the most powerful capabilities of OpenTelemetry is correlation — the ability to connect related telemetry data across different dimensions. Correlation enables teams to seamlessly navigate from logs to traces, traces to logs, and metrics to both, helping in faster debugging, root cause analysis, and performance optimization.
Why Correlation is Essential
A single request might traverse multiple systems in a distributed system, each generating its own logs, traces, and metrics. Without correlation, troubleshooting issues requires sifting through siloed data and having an in-depth business understanding, making it time-consuming and error-prone. Correlation solves this by linking telemetry signals using unique identifiers…
