Elastic launches new OpenTelemetry distributions for monitoring

Elastic has announced the launch of Elastic Distributions of OpenTelemetry (EDOT), a portfolio of OpenTelemetry (OTel) components specifically designed to improve infrastructure and application monitoring within standard OTel distributions. The introduction of EDOT aims to provide users with deeper insights and enhanced troubleshooting capabilities, including fixes outside the usual OTel release cycles and enterprise-grade support from Elastic.

The portfolio consists of various components such as the Elastic Distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector (EDOT Collector) and Elastic Distributions of Language Software Development Kits (SDKs). These SDKs support Java, Python, NodeJS, .NET, iOS, and Android platforms, with plans to add support for additional languages in the future. Notably, the EDOT will continue to allow users to utilise native OTel components alongside Elastic's offerings.

Ken Exner, chief product officer at Elastic, elaborated on the company's commitment to enhancing application and stack observability. "As organisations' use of technology evolves, so do their needs for application and stack observability. Building on our decision to adopt and recommend OTel for observing applications, Elastic is committed to contributing EDOT features or components upstream into the OTel community, fostering a collaborative environment and enhancing the overall OTel ecosystem," Exner explained.

The introduction of EDOT includes several advancements aimed at improving observability. The Elastic Distributions of SDKs integrate additional application performance monitoring (APM) capabilities from Elastic's own APM agents into OTel language SDKs. This integration seeks to maintain seamless compatibility with Elastic Observability, while also rolling out OTel versions of Elastic's APM agents and adding more language SDKs in line with OTel specifications.

Documentation and details about all EDOT components are accessible in Elastic's public OpenTelemetry GitHub repository. EDOT is currently available in tech preview, allowing developers and Site Reliability Engineers (SREs) to explore its capabilities and functionalities. Elastic's initiative to improve the observability ecosystem stems from an understanding of the evolving technological landscape and aims to offer robust solutions for contemporary infrastructure and application monitoring challenges.