OpenTelemetry Developer Handbook – Azure, GCP & AWS

When something breaks in production, you need to know where it broke, why, and how long it has been broken. OpenTelemetry gives you that information automatically, with one consistent standard.

A trace follows a single request across multiple services. Each step is a span.

Numeric measurements over time: request count, error rate, memory usage, custom KPIs.

Timestamped event records. OTel correlates logs with the exact trace and span they belong to.

The Collector receives data from your app, transforms or filters it, and forwards it to one or many backends. Switch cloud vendors without changing application code.

ConsoleSpanExporter is only for development. The next chapters replace it with a real cloud exporter.

Azure Portal → "Application Insights" → Create. Copy the Connection String from the resource overview.

npm install @azure/monitor-opentelemetry-exporter

const {{ AzureMonitorTraceExporter }} = require('@azure/monitor-opentelemetry-exporter');
const {{ AzureMonitorMetricExporter }} = require('@azure/monitor-opentelemetry-exporter');
const {{ PeriodicExportingMetricReader }} = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-metrics');
const connectionString = process.env.APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING;
const sdk = new NodeSDK({{
  traceExporter: new AzureMonitorTraceExporter({{ connectionString }}),
  metricReader: new PeriodicExportingMetricReader({{
    exporter: new AzureMonitorMetricExporter({{ connectionString }}), exportIntervalMillis: 60000,
  }}),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()],
}});
sdk.start();

# Linux / macOS
export APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING="InstrumentationKey=xxx;..."
node -r ./instrumentation.js app.js

# Windows PowerShell
$env:APPLICATIONINSIGHTS_CONNECTION_STRING = "InstrumentationKey=xxx;..."
node -r ./instrumentation.js app.js

Azure Portal → Application Insights → Transaction Search, Application Map, Performance, Logs (KQL).

requests
| where timestamp > ago(1h) and duration > 500
| project timestamp, name, duration, resultCode
| order by duration desc | take 50

gcloud services enable cloudtrace.googleapis.com monitoring.googleapis.com
gcloud iam service-accounts create otel-exporter
gcloud projects add-iam-policy-binding YOUR_PROJECT_ID --member="serviceAccount:otel-exporter@YOUR_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com" --role="roles/cloudtrace.agent"
gcloud iam service-accounts keys create ./gcp-otel-key.json --iam-account="otel-exporter@YOUR_PROJECT_ID.iam.gserviceaccount.com" 

npm install @google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter @google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-monitoring-exporter

const {{ TraceExporter }} = require('@google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-trace-exporter');
const {{ MetricExporter }} = require('@google-cloud/opentelemetry-cloud-monitoring-exporter');
const projectId = process.env.GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT;
const sdk = new NodeSDK({{
  traceExporter: new TraceExporter({{ projectId }}),
  metricReader: new PeriodicExportingMetricReader({{
    exporter: new MetricExporter({{ projectId }}), exportIntervalMillis: 60000,
  }}),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()],
}});
sdk.start();

export GOOGLE_APPLICATION_CREDENTIALS="./gcp-otel-key.json"
export GOOGLE_CLOUD_PROJECT="your-gcp-project-id"
node -r ./instrumentation.js app.js

Google Cloud Console → Cloud Trace → Trace Explorer → click any trace for the full span view.

npm install @opentelemetry/id-generator-aws-xray @opentelemetry/propagator-aws-xray @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc

const {{ AWSXRayIdGenerator }} = require('@opentelemetry/id-generator-aws-xray');
const {{ AWSXRayPropagator }} = require('@opentelemetry/propagator-aws-xray');
const {{ OTLPTraceExporter }} = require('@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-grpc');
const {{ propagation }} = require('@opentelemetry/api');
propagation.setGlobalPropagator(new AWSXRayPropagator());
const sdk = new NodeSDK({{
  idGenerator: new AWSXRayIdGenerator(),  // CRITICAL for X-Ray
  traceExporter: new OTLPTraceExporter({{ url: 'grpc://localhost:4317' }}),
  instrumentations: [getNodeAutoInstrumentations()],
}});
sdk.start();

export AWS_REGION=us-east-1
node -r ./instrumentation.js app.js

AWS Console → CloudWatch → X-Ray → Traces. Check X-Ray → Service Map for auto-generated topology.

1. Add custom spans to your key business functions.
2. Add custom metrics (orders.processed, queue.depth).
3. Set up alerts on error rate and p99 latency.
4. Explore OTel Collector processors: filter, attributes, tail_sampling.
5. Read the official docs at opentelemetry.io.