The OpenTelemetry standard, SDKs and Collector.
3 items
I sent 200 requests across eleven kinds of hand-off with the OpenTelemetry Python SDK. Five lost every trace, batching lost 90%, and the failures you most want to trace were the ones left behind.
Cardinality does not creep up on you — it multiplies. Here is the arithmetic behind an exploding metrics bill, the four places the multiplication hides, and what actually shrinks it.
What observability actually means, how metrics, logs and traces each answer different questions, how a trace is built, where OpenTelemetry fits, and how SLOs turn signals into alerts.