📡

OpenTelemetry Learning Roadmap

Vendor-neutral instrumentation for traces, metrics, and logs.

Estimated time:3–4 weeks

1🌱

Phase 1 — Fundamentals

Signals: traces, metrics, logs

SDKs vs auto-instrumentation

Spans, context propagation

Resource attributes & semantic conventions

2⚙️

OTel Collector: receivers, processors, exporters

Pipelines configuration

Sampling strategies (head vs tail)

Batching & retry configuration

3🧑‍💻

Manual span creation

Context propagation across services

Baggage for cross-cutting metadata

Exporting to Prometheus/Jaeger/vendor backends

4📈

advanced

Collector scaling (agent + gateway pattern)

Cardinality control for metrics

Cost-aware sampling at scale

Migrating from vendor SDKs to OTel

Begin with interview questions to assess your current level.