Behind the magic of auto-instrumentation (Grafana ❤️‍🔥 OTel Community Call #5)

We’re back with the new Grafana ❤️‍🔥OpenTelemetry Community Call!

You add the OpenTelemetry Java agent, restart your app - and like magic, observability appears. But is it really magic?

What’s actually enabled by default? What telemetry should you expect to see? What’s missing? And what might you want to tweak, tune, or even turn off?

In this episode, we go behind the magic of OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation and explore how to navigate its rapidly growing list of instrumentations. Jay DeLuca (OpenTelemetry Java Instrumentation & Contrib Approver and Ecosystem Explorer Project Lead) joins us to unpack how it all works under the hood - and how to approach that “magic” with informed curiosity.

We’ll cover:

• What really happens when you drop in the OTel Java agent - and what you get out of the box
• How to determine what’s actually instrumented, what telemetry is emitted, and how stable those instrumentations are
• How we’re making OTel easier to navigate with the Ecosystem Explorer
• Where and how you can jump in and contribute to OpenTelemetry

Join the conversation, bring your questions, and if it sparks something for you, jump in and help us build and improve OpenTelemetry together.

This event will be livestreamed on YouTube and published on the same link after the fact: https://youtube.com/live/HItumi3qt90