Building an Open Source Observability Stack from Raw Telemetry
11-10, 11:45–12:15 (MST), Theater

This session will guide you through the process of building a complete observability stack from the ground up using raw telemetry data ingested directly into a datastore, combining a variety of open source signals including OpenTelemetry and Prometheus formats.

We’ll start by leveraging our existing telemetry — likely logs and metrics — for maximum effectiveness — because telemetry without action is just storage. We'll delve into the foundational aspects of creating OLAP cubes, essential for efficient data analysis and real-time insights. We’ll transform and enrich telemetry data to make it actionable — and show how to optimize storage and query performance to handle large-scale data with ease.

We’ll use this data for creating insightful visualizations with tools like Perses. I’ll show how to create well-formed time-series data even when the underlying data has gaps or varying granularity, and we’ll add robust alerting.

Drawing from experience with proprietary and open source observability tools, we’ll then evolve our monitoring by filling in instrumentation gaps and adding application telemetry. We’ll use automations like eBPF to fully observe a massively distributed cloud database offering.

This talk will equip you with the knowledge to implement a scalable, secure, and efficient open source observability stack tailored to your unique needs. Whether you're starting from scratch or looking to enhance your existing observability infrastructure, join me to discover practical strategies and innovative solutions that you can implement today.

Joshua is a seasoned software developer with over a decade of experience, specializing in a broad range of topics including operations, observability, agile methodologies, and accessibility. His passion for technology is matched by his enthusiasm for sharing knowledge through public speaking. Currently, Joshua serves as a Developer Advocate for Altinity, where he creates educational content on ClickHouse and OpenTelemetry. Additionally, he is an active contributor to the OpenTelemetry project, helping to advance the field of observability in software development.