What options do we have to observe our Python application without touching its code? Let’s take a look at the OpenTelemetry Kubernetes operator and to the OpenTelemetry Python own autoinstrumentation. We’ll evaluate the differences between the two solutions highlighting their strong and weak spots.

In this talk we’ll see the options we have to add observability to Python applications with OpenTelemetry without touching our application code. In OpenTelemetry this is called autoinstrumentation or zero-code instrumentation. We’ll see:

The OpenTelemetry operator, a Kubernetes operator to manage collection and inject autoinstrumentation to the pods
OpenTelemetry Python own autoinstrumentation solution based on the opentelemetry-instrument wrapper
OpenTelemetry Python programmatic autoinstrumentation with 2 lines of code

We’ll evaluate the differences between the three solutions highlighting their strong and weak spots.

We are also taking a look on the work done inside the OpenTelemetry project around GenAI.

Observing Python applications with OpenTelemetry