Getting started
To get started with OpenTelemetry in CloudWatch, you can use the pre-packaged OpenTelemetry setup that is available with the CloudWatch agent along with the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry SDKs. This gives you the most integrated monitoring experience in CloudWatch.
Note
Make sure Transaction Search is enabled before you use the OTLP Endpoint for traces.
Alternatively, you have the flexibility to use the OpenTelemetry Collector or your own custom OpenTelemetry Collector to directly send telemetry to the OTLP endpoint. You can use the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry to go collector-less and to send telemetry directly to the OTLP endpoint. Make an informed choice based on the feature support:
| Feature | OpenTelemetry Collector | Custom OpenTelemetry Collector | AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry |
|---|---|---|---|
|
CloudWatch application signals (Application performance metrics, service discovery, and application map) |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Search and analyze spans and trace summaries |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Search and analyze logs summaries |
Yes |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Application performance monitoring telemetry enrichment with AWS infrastructure attributes that your application is hosted in. |
No |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Runtime metrics correlated with your application. For example, JVM metrics |
No |
Yes |
No |
|
AWS Support |
Data received by AWS |
Data received by AWS |
Data received by AWS |
|
Telemetry supported |
Logs, Metrics, Traces |
Logs, Traces, Metrics |
Metrics, Traces |