OpenTelemetry & Distributed Tracing: A Jaeger v2 Deep Dive

OpenTelemetry (OTel) is the industry standard for observability, providing vendor-neutral APIs, SDKs, and tools to generate and collect telemetry data including traces, metrics, and logs. This session focuses specifically on OTel’s pivotal role in distributed tracing. We’ll delve into the OpenTelemetry tracing specifications, examining how they standardize trace context propagation, span formats, and data collection, enabling interoperability across complex systems. Presented by Jonah, a maintainer of Jaeger who has been involved with the OpenTelemetry project since its inception, this session showcases the power of this standard implemented in Jaeger v2. Discover how this popular distributed tracing platform has undergone a major evolution, fundamentally integrating OTel tracing into its core architecture. Learn about the key architectural advancements within Jaeger driven by this native OTel adoption, resulting in more powerful and standardized tracing capabilities. We will also cover practical deployment using the fully integrated Helm chart and Kubernetes operator, Jaeger’s future roadmap aligned with OTel, and opportunities for community contribution.