Observability via OpenTelemetry

Learn how AEM as a Cloud Service uses OpenTelemetry to send traces, metrics, and logs to the Application Performance Monitoring (APM) platform of your choice.

Adobe is replacing the built-in Application Performance Monitoring (APM) integration in AEM as a Cloud Service with OpenTelemetry, an open standard for collecting and exporting traces, metrics, and logs. With OpenTelemetry, you bring your own APM endpoint and monitor AEM alongside the rest of your applications, using the tools your teams already know. For more information, see the OpenTelemetry documentation.

This article explains what the integration provides, how telemetry flows from AEM to your APM platform, what you control, and what to consider before you enable it. The configuration tutorial explains how to set up OpenTelemetry for your AEM environment.

Why OpenTelemetry

With OpenTelemetry, you can:

Adobe provides and updates the OpenTelemetry Java agent that runs with AEM, so you do not install or upgrade it. You decide where the telemetry goes.

How it works

The following diagram shows the logical flow of telemetry from AEM services to your observability platform:

The OpenTelemetry Java agent collects application telemetry from AEM services and sends it to an OpenTelemetry Collector running within the AEM environment. The collector processes the telemetry and forwards it over OTLP/HTTPS to your configured observability platform.

Only telemetry generated by your AEM application is sent. Information about the underlying runtime and platform, such as internal hostnames, addresses, container identifiers, and operating system or process details, is removed before any data leaves your environment.

What telemetry is available

A few details to keep in mind:

How AEM services are identified

Every trace, metric, and log entry carries resource attributes that let your platform tell environments and tiers apart:

Use these attributes to filter and group telemetry, and to correlate logs with traces and metrics from the same service.

What you control

You configure the integration by deploying the config/otel.yaml file using the Cloud Manager Config Pipeline.

The sample configuration file is:

kind: "Otel"
version: "v1"
metadata:
  envTypes:
    - "dev"
    - "stage"
    - "prod"
data:
  enabled: true
  type: "generic"
  endpoint: "<YOUR_OTLP_HTTPS_ENDPOINT>"
  authHeaderName: "Authorization"
  authHeaderValue: "${{secrets.OTEL_CUSTOMER_AUTH}}"
  metrics: true
  logs: true
  advancedNetworking: false

The configuration determines:

The authentication credential (authHeaderValue) should be stored as a Cloud Manager secret environment variable named OTEL_CUSTOMER_AUTH, and referenced from the configuration file. Never store credentials as plain text in the repository.

If your OTLP/HTTPS endpoint is private, or requires outbound traffic from a known, stable IP address, enable Advanced Networking with dedicated egress. The advancedNetworking setting has no effect unless Cloud Manager has already provisioned Advanced Networking for the environment. A public SaaS endpoint uses the standard outbound network path.

Supported destinations

You can send telemetry to any APM platform that exposes an OTLP/HTTPS endpoint, including:

This list is not exhaustive. OpenTelemetry defines the telemetry format and export protocol and your selected platform determines how the data is queried, visualized, retained, and alerted on.

Choose an observability platform

You need a platform that accepts OTLP/HTTPS to receive the telemetry. Adobe does not provide it, you must bring your own observability platform.

If your organization already uses one of the platforms above, start there. If not, choose between a vendor-hosted (SaaS) platform and a self-hosted one:

Before you start

Next steps

Follow the configuration tutorial to set up OpenTelemetry with the AEM WKND sample project or your own AEM project.

Additional resources