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OpenTelemetry Metrics

OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework designed to generate, collect, and manage telemetry data (metrics, traces, and logs) in distributed systems. It provides a standardized way to instrument, generate, collect, and export telemetry data for analysis, making it easier to monitor and troubleshoot complex distributed applications.

Integration with Zilliqa

A Zilliqa node contains various performance and operational metrics compatible with the OpenTelemetry protocol specification. These metrics are useful for:

  • Monitoring node performance and health
  • Understanding system behavior under different conditions
  • Enabling proactive maintenance and troubleshooting

To export the OpenTelemetry metrics, you can define a collector endpoint with the --otlp-endpoint parameter in z2 join, for example http://localhost:4317:

z2 join --chain zq2-prototestnet --otlp-endpoint=http://localhost:4317

This endpoint should point to a OpenTelemetry compatible collector in your monitoring stack such as:

Local Testing

For local testing of the OpenTelemetry integration and metrics with the Zilliqa nodes, you can use the provided Docker Compose project in the infra/opentelemetry folder of the zq2 repository, and run from the root path:

docker-compose -f infra/opentelemetry/compose.yaml up -d

This will deploy a Zilliqa environment configured with the OpenTelemetry toolset, and once deployed, the metrics can be visualized through Grafana in the sample ZQ2 OpenTelemetry dashboard in http://localhost:9010/d/fefb64au9pd6ob/zq2-opentelemetry.

Note that in order to see some metrics, RPC sample calls should be generated in the ZQ2 nodes and they will be visible after some seconds. For example:

curl --request POST --url http://localhost:4211 --header 'content-type: application/json' --data '{"method":"GetVersion","id":1,"jsonrpc":"2.0"}'