App Insights & Open Telemetry SDK

Question

I would like to add instrumentation to my code running in Azure Functions and App Service to emit telemetry data that could be visualized using Azure App Insights / other tools within the Azure Monitor umbrella. Could both AppInsights SDK and OpenTelemetry SDK be used in tandem to generate telemetry? Are there features that are specific to AppInsights SDK and OpenTelemetry SDK that could be leveraged when using both the SDKs?

Answer 1

@Vivek Shankar , Apologies for the delayed response. I have summarized the information for this question under the following category, based on my discussion with the AppInsights team:

1. Can both Azure OpenTelemetry based SDK and AppInsights SDK be used in a single application?
   It’s not recommended, as you may get duplicate telemetry. Also, certain components can only be enabled from single package like "Profiler".
2. Are there any features in one SDK which is not available in other OR Is there something available in OpenTelemetry which was yet not available in AppInsights SDK?
   OpenTelemetry includes more metric instruments including histograms (which will eventually be supported in our backend). OpenTelemetry also includes Redis instrumentations. It is also generally more performant at-scale than the Application Insights SDK. It is also capable of exporting to two or more destinations.

For more details, also see Announcing Azure Monitor OpenTelemetry Distro

You could also join the chat at the bottom of the post above to interact with the OpenTelemetry team, open an issue on Github, or send feedback at OTel@microsoft.com.

Hope this helps.