Getting Started

Get telemetry from a client-server app in less than 5 minutes!

In this page, you’ll learn how to set up and get tracing telemetry from a simple hello-world client-server example.

You’ll work with gRPC’s Java Quick start example, which uses gRPC to communicate between the client and server. You can work through this page even if you aren’t familiar with gRPC.

Get and run the example

First, get and run the hello-world example without instrumentation:

  1. Get the example code.
  2. Run the example: you should see the client output “Hello world”.
  3. Stop the server before proceeding, if it is still running.

Run the instrumented example

Next, you’ll use a Java agent to automatically instrument the client and server at launch time. While you can configure the Java agent in a number of ways, the steps below use environment variables.

  1. Download opentelemetry-javaagent.jar from Releases of the opentelemetry-java-instrumentation repo. The JAR file contains the agent and all automatic instrumentation packages.

  2. Set and export variables that specify the Java agent JAR and a console exporter, using a notation suitable for your shell/terminal environment — we illustrate a notation for bash-like shells:

    $ export JAVA_OPTS="-javaagent:PATH/TO/opentelemetry-javaagent.jar"
$ export OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=logging
$ export OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=logging

  3. Run the server as a background process. For example, for bash-like shells run:

    $ ./build/install/examples/bin/hello-world-server &
[otel.javaagent 2022-03-19 13:38:16:712 +0000] [main] INFO io.opentelemetry.javaagent.tooling.VersionLogger - opentelemetry-javaagent - version: 1.12.0
Mar 19, 2022 1:38:18 PM io.grpc.examples.helloworld.HelloWorldServer start
...

    Note the output from the otel.javaagent.

  4. From the same terminal, run the client:

    $ ./build/install/examples/bin/hello-world-client
[otel.javaagent 2022-03-19 13:38:48:462 +0000] [main] INFO io.opentelemetry.javaagent.tooling.VersionLogger - opentelemetry-javaagent - version: 1.12.0
Mar 19, 2022 1:38:50 PM io.grpc.examples.helloworld.HelloWorldClient greet
INFO: Will try to greet world ...
[Trace output elided -- see below for details]
Mar 19, 2022 1:38:51 PM io.grpc.examples.helloworld.HelloWorldClient greet
INFO: Greeting: Hello world

  5. Stop the server process. For example, for bash-like shells run:

    $ jobs
[1]+  Running                 ./build/install/examples/bin/hello-world-server &
$ kill %1
...
*** server shut down

At step 4, you should have seen trace output from the server and client that looks something like this (trace output is line-wrapped for convenience):

[otel.javaagent 2022-03-19 13:38:51:310 +0000] [grpc-default-executor-0] INFO
io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingSpanExporter -
'helloworld.Greeter/SayHello' : 150407692a813ceb4e9f49a02c8b1fd0
ee15310978e6f6d3 SERVER [tracer: io.opentelemetry.grpc-1.6:1.12.0]
AttributesMap{data={net.transport=ip_tcp, rpc.grpc.status_code=0,
rpc.service=helloworld.Greeter, thread.id=16, rpc.method=SayHello,
rpc.system=grpc, net.peer.ip=127.0.0.1, thread.name=grpc-default-executor-0,
net.peer.port=44186}, capacity=128, totalAddedValues=9}

[otel.javaagent 2022-03-19 13:38:51:368 +0000] [main] INFO
io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingSpanExporter -
'helloworld.Greeter/SayHello' : 150407692a813ceb4e9f49a02c8b1fd0
6ed56cd008f241c5 CLIENT [tracer: io.opentelemetry.grpc-1.6:1.12.0]
AttributesMap{data={net.transport=ip_tcp, net.peer.name=localhost,
rpc.grpc.status_code=0, rpc.service=helloworld.Greeter, thread.id=1,
rpc.method=SayHello, rpc.system=grpc, thread.name=main, net.peer.port=50051},
capacity=128, totalAddedValues=9}

At step 5, when stopping the server, you should see an output of all the metrics collected (metrics output is line-wrapped and shortened for convenience):

[otel.javaagent 2022-10-18 10:12:12:650 +0200] [Thread-0] INFO 
io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingMetricExporter - Received a collection 
of 15 metrics for export.
[otel.javaagent 2022-10-18 10:12:12:651 +0200] [Thread-0] INFO 
io.opentelemetry.exporter.logging.LoggingMetricExporter - metric: 
ImmutableMetricData{resource=Resource{...}, 
instrumentationScopeInfo=InstrumentationScopeInfo{...}, 
name=rpc.server.duration, description=The duration of an inbound RPC invocation, 
unit=ms, type=HISTOGRAM,
data=ImmutableHistogramData{aggregationTemporality=CUMULATIVE, 
points=[ImmutableHistogramPointData{getStartEpochNanos=1666080515038517000, 
getEpochNanos=1666080732649264000, getAttributes={net.host.name="localhost", 
net.transport="ip_tcp", rpc.grpc.status_code=0, rpc.method="SayHello", 
rpc.service="helloworld.Greeter", rpc.system="grpc"}, getSum=20.300248000000003,
getCount=12, hasMin=true, getMin=0.278541, hasMax=true, getMax=16.563833,
getBoundaries=[5.0, 10.0, 25.0, 50.0, 75.0, 100.0, 250.0, 500.0, 750.0, 1000.0,
2500.0, 5000.0, 7500.0, 10000.0], getCounts=[11, 0, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0,
0, 0, 0, 0], getExemplars=[ImmutableDoubleExemplarData{filteredAttributes={},
epochNanos=1666080530527597000, 
spanContext=ImmutableSpanContext{traceId=f60e0940793cb1dc95bcb86e4668a548,
spanId=9737452b2e78e75f, traceFlags=01,
traceState=ArrayBasedTraceState{entries=[]}, remote=false, valid=true},
value=0.278541}, ImmutableDoubleExemplarData{filteredAttributes={},
epochNanos=1666080519431994000,
spanContext=ImmutableSpanContext{traceId=723ace62b22b2db3bc8323be279e0e55,
spanId=44159949946521e7, traceFlags=01,
traceState=ArrayBasedTraceState{entries=[]}, remote=false, valid=true},
value=16.563833}]}]}}
...

What next?

For more:

Last modified October 19, 2022: Add statement on metrics to java getting started (#1873) (96370c5)