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Running the OpenTelemetry demo application in AWS

  • Clone the OpenTelemetry demo application repository. 

    git clone https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-demo.git
cd opentelemetry-demo

  • Update the trace exporter to send to Splunk Observability.

    • Change src/otel-collector/otelcol-config-extras.yml 
      exporters:
  otlphttp/splunk:
    traces_endpoint: https://ingest.<Splunk_Observability_realm>.signalfx.com:443/v2/trace/otlp
    headers:
        "X-SF-Token": "<Splunk_Observability_access_token>"
        "Content-Type": "application/x-protobuf"

service:
  pipelines:
    traces:
        exporters: [spanmetrics, otlphttp/splunk]
      • Replace <Splunk_Observability_realm> with your Splunk Observability realm (e.g., us0, us1, eu0, etc.)
      • Replace <Splunk_Observability_access_token> with your Splunk Observability access token.

  • Start the OpenTelemetry demo application 

    docker-compose up --force-recreate --remove-orphans --detach

docker-compose-up command execution

You may encounter issues with OpenSearch container during startup

Since we don't need it in this lab, please remove its configuration from docker-compose.yml file.

  • If you have already run docker compose up please run docker compose down
  • Locate the opensearch service section and either remove it or comment it out
  • Comment/Remove opensearch from the otel-collector service's depends_on section
  • Verify that the application is running by visiting http://<your-ec2-public-ip>:8080 in your web browser. You should see the OpenTelemetry demo application homepage.

Otel Demo App

View a trace in Splunk Observability

  • Call a REST API of the OpenTelemetry demo application to generate some traces

    • Firsty create a random traceparent. Example of traceparent header is 00-4bf92f3577b34da6a3ce929d0e0e4736-051581bf3cb55c14-01.
    • Call a REST API 
      curl http://<your-ec2-public-ip>:8080/api/cart -H 'traceparent: <your-traceparent-ID>
      • example: 
        curl http://<your-ec2-public-ip>:8080/api/cart -H 'traceparent: 00-4bf92f3577b34da6a3ce929d0e0e4736-00f067aa0ba902b7-01'

  • Open the trace: https://app.us1.signalfx.com/#/apm/traces/4bf92f3577b34da6a3ce929d0e0e4736

Please note that it can take up to 5 minutes to see the trace in Splunk.

trace