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Use OpenTelemetry with Azure Monitor (Limited Preview)

Azure Monitor ingests OpenTelemetry (OTel) signals—traces, metrics, and logs—from your applications and platforms. Application Insights orchestrates ingestion into Azure Monitor and provides experiences to explore the data. You can also use the OpenTelemetry Collector to export telemetry to Azure Monitor. After onboarding, use troubleshooting and exploration experiences in Application Insights, work with Prometheus metrics in Dashboards with Grafana, and analyze logs and traces in Log Analytics using OpenTelemetry semantic conventions.

Important

Note

Review capabilities

  • Ingest OTel traces, metrics, and logs into Azure Monitor by using Application Insights for data collection and orchestration.
  • Ingest OTel traces, metrics, and logs into Azure Monitor with platform ingestion components such as Azure Monitor Agent (AMA), Data Collection Rules (DCRs), and Data Collection Endpoints (DCEs).
  • Use the OpenTelemetry Collector to export to Azure Monitor ingestion endpoints that Application Insights or your own orchestration provides.
  • Explore application signals in Application Insights, including distributed tracing and diagnostics experiences. Use familiar blades such as Performance, Failures, Search, and Transaction details with OTel data.
  • Use Dashboards with Grafana in the Azure portal for Application Insights data. Start from Azure‑managed dashboards that focus on OpenTelemetry and common application scenarios.
  • Query logs and traces in Log Analytics by using an OpenTelemetry semantic conventions–based schema.

Choose an onboarding path

Select one of the following paths based on where your workloads run.

Monitor applications on Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) with OpenTelemetry

Enable application monitoring for Azure Kubernetes Service (AKS) and send OTLP telemetry to Azure Monitor. Application Insights orchestrates ingestion and provides investigation experiences.

  • Enable the AKS integration in the cluster’s Monitor settings to add the required Azure Monitor components.
  • Create or select an Application Insights resource with Enable OTLP Support (Preview) and Use managed workspaces set to Yes.
  • Onboard applications per namespace or per deployment by using either:
    • Autoinstrumentation for Java and Node.js.
    • Autoconfiguration for apps already instrumented with OpenTelemetry Software Development Kits (SDKs).

For more information, see Monitor AKS applications with OpenTelemetry Protocol (OTLP) Limited Preview.

Configure other environments

Use the Azure Monitor Agent or OpenTelemetry Collector to send OTLP signals from compute resources outside AKS into Azure Monitor.

  • Use Application Insights to orchestrate ingestion into Azure Monitor. Create an Application Insights resource to automatically create the required workspaces (AMW and LAW), and capture the Data Collection Rule (DCR) link and OTLP endpoint URLs for traces, metrics, and logs from the Overview page.
  • Orchestrate ingestion manually. Create an Azure Monitor Workspace (AMW), Log Analytics workspace (LAW), Data Collection Endpoints (DCEs), and Data Collection Rules (DCRs), then build the three OTLP endpoint URLs for metrics, logs, and traces.
  • Export from the OpenTelemetry Collector. Use the Collector contrib distribution and authenticate with Microsoft Entra ID or a managed identity. Use the Collector’s Azure Auth extension to authenticate with Microsoft Entra. For details, see the extension README: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-collector-contrib/tree/main/extension/azureauthextension#readme

For more information, see Ingest OpenTelemetry Protocol signals into Azure Monitor (Limited Preview).

Tip

Endpoint URLs also appear on the Application Insights Overview page when OTLP support is enabled. Use these values in your Collector exporters or SDK configuration.

Use Azure Monitor experiences

After onboarding, use the following experiences to investigate and visualize your telemetry.

Use Application Insights troubleshooting and diagnostics

For more information, see Monitor AI agents with Application Insights.

Use Dashboards with Grafana for Prometheus metrics

  • Start from Azure‑managed dashboards that cover OpenTelemetry and common Application Insights scenarios. You can customize, copy, or use them as a reference for your own dashboards.
  • Create, edit, and save dashboards as Azure resources and manage access with Azure role‑based access control (RBAC). Use Azure Resource Manager (ARM) or Bicep to automate deployments.
  • Use Grafana Explore for ad‑hoc queries and add results to dashboards. Prometheus metrics queried here complement the Application Insights experiences.

For more information, see Dashboards with Grafana in Application Insights.

Query logs and traces with OpenTelemetry semantic conventions

  • Use Kusto Query Language (KQL) in Log Analytics to query logs and traces stored with an OpenTelemetry semantic conventions–based schema.
  • Filter and aggregate with familiar OpenTelemetry attributes and span kinds.
  • Join metrics, logs, and traces for correlated analysis.

For more information, see OpenTelemetry semantic conventions and Application Insights telemetry data model.

Reference

  • Supported protocol (preview):
    • Collector path: OTLP over HTTP/protobuf.
    • AMA path: Application‑to‑agent communication over gRPC on local ports.
  • Ports for AMA‑based ingestion (preview):
    • 4317 (gRPC) for metrics
    • 4319 (gRPC) for logs and traces
    • Host: localhost
  • Known limitations (AKS preview excerpt):
    • Unsupported node pools: Windows and Linux Arm64.
    • OTLP HTTP/protobuf only; JSON payloads and OTLP/gRPC aren't supported.
    • Selected networking scenarios such as Istio mTLS aren't supported.

Support

Assistance for enrolled subscriptions is available only through otel@microsoft.com.

Next steps

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