When Things Go Sideways: Troubleshooting the OTel Operator

As systems continue to evolve, they bring growing complexity with them: these include complexities in infrastructure and in software architecture. Having observable systems helps engineers manage this complexity. Many organizations rely on Kubernetes to run their software, and running the OpenTelemetry (OTel) Operator can help unlock the power of observability.

The OTel Operator is a great tool that helps make your life a little easier by managing OTel for you in your Kubernetes cluster, by:

• Managing the deployment of the OpenTelemetry Collector
• Managing the configuration of a fleet of OpenTelemetry Collectors via OpAMP integration
• Injecting and configuring auto-instrumentation into your pods

Unfortunately, the OTel Operator can seem daunting to the novice user, especially when it doesn’t behave as expected.

In this talk, Adriana and Reese will cover:

• An overview of the OTel Operator
• Common installation issues
• Common auto-instrumentation issues
• Common OTel Collector deployment issues
• …and how to tackle them all

Attendees will walk away from this session with a better understanding of how they can leverage the Operator, and be empowered to use it with confidence.