Agent and spring boot starter together?

[johnvlittle]

WE have tried the new relic agent and the OT agent, both produce too much traffic (expensive) and neither instruments things like scheduled processes doing work or que listeners doing work. We assume we need to add our own instrumentation. We are considering micrometer (excellent documentation, mature product) or OT spring boot sdk.

The question is, do we need both the OT anent and OT Spring boot or is it one or the other?

IF we go with only the spring boot SDK:

• will it automatically pickup the things which the agent does, such as REST calls and their dependencies (database calls and feign calls), or do we have to do that by hand?
• Does it require a collector to use with New Relic, or can it send data directly to it?

I've just seen that the OT spring boot project only supports 2.6 and 3.1. We are stuck on spring boot 2.0.3, so this forces us to use micrometer unfortunately.

[jeanbisutti]

You can use the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter without the OpenTelemetry Java agent.

will it automatically pickup the things which the agent does, such as REST calls and their dependencies (database calls and feign calls), or do we have to do that by hand?

Yes, if it is covered by the out the box instrumentation of the OpenTelemetry Spring Boot starter: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/zero-code/java/spring-boot-starter/out-of-the-box-instrumentation/

You can also enable additional instrumentation: https://opentelemetry.io/docs/zero-code/java/spring-boot-starter/additional-instrumentations/

Does it require a collector to use with New Relic, or can it send data directly to it?

If New Relic supports OTLP. You have to check with New Relic.

I've just seen that the OT spring boot project only supports 2.6 and 3.1. We are stuck on spring boot 2.0.3, so this forces us to use micrometer unfortunately.

Our automatic tests are checking the features from Spring Boot 2.6. We are not sure that all the features work with Spring Boot 2.0.3. If you see an issue with Spring Boot 2.0.3, we could have a look.

[Jamel-jun]

@jeanbisutti Hi.
I would like to ask, I am currently using the OpenTelemetry agent, which is working well. Now I have a requirement to customize some business metrics. After comparing Micrometer and OpenTelemetry metrics, I found that OpenTelemetry metrics are somewhat better.

I have looked through many documents, and it seems that to customize OpenTelemetry metrics, I can either use the OpenTelemetry Spring Starter or write an OpenTelemetry agent extension.

My idea is to just use the OpenTelemetry agent and then write a meter implementation. The OpenTelemetry agent should be able to automatically discover this meter implementation and export metrics to the OpenTelemetry collector. Is this possible?

I saw in the extension documentation that it mentions using the AutoService annotation, but does this mean that I definitely need to package it as a JAR and use -Dotel.javaagent.extensions for it to work properly?

Is there an SPI provided by the agent to implement automatic discovery, so that developers don’t have to spend extra effort packaging it into a JAR?

[trask]

The OpenTelemetry agent should be able to automatically discover this meter implementation and export metrics to the OpenTelemetry collector. Is this possible?

yes, you can use GlobalOpenTelemetry.getMeter(..) in your application and the Java agent will export your metric to the collector

[Jamel-jun]

The OpenTelemetry agent should be able to automatically discover this meter implementation and export metrics to the OpenTelemetry collector. Is this possible?

yes, you can use GlobalOpenTelemetry.getMeter(..) in your application and the Java agent will export your metric to the collector

I have another question. I want to intercept the current service's metrics and add a name prefix to the metrics under certain scope modules. Is there a way to achieve this?

[trask]

It would probably require writing a java agent extension and wrapping the exporter. It's probably easier to do this in the collector.

[Jamel-jun]

It would probably require writing a java agent extension and wrapping the exporter. It's probably easier to do this in the collector.

I didn't find the docs on how to rename a metric name, would you mind sharing that?
I'm going to use the AutoConfigurationCustomizerProvider spi in my project, which avoids having to build an additional agent extension

[laurit]

I'm going to use the AutoConfigurationCustomizerProvider spi in my project, which avoids having to build an additional agent extension

if you wish to customize the agent you will have to package your extension as jar or modify the agent jar. Placing the SPI implementations in your application will not work.

I didn't find the docs on how to rename a metric name, would you mind sharing that?

There probably isn't a straightforward way to do this. @trask suggested implementing a custom exporter that delegates to the otlp exporter. You'd have to implement something like https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/blob/main/sdk/trace/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/sdk/trace/data/DelegatingSpanData.java for https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-java/blob/main/sdk/metrics/src/main/java/io/opentelemetry/sdk/metrics/data/MetricData.java then you can replace InstrumentationScopeInfo with what you want. To reiterate, it's probably easier to do this in the collector.