OTel Community Day North America 2024

You can send OTel metrics over the wire using delta or cumulative temporality, but few users fully understand the respective implications on the robustness and correctness of their data. In this talk Tom draws from his first-hand experience in building the OpenTelemetry Collector’s delta-to-cumulative processor, out of the quick wins around converting Sums up to the more nuanced discussions about histograms. He will highlight the difference between the two aggregations before delving into the intricate effects of either on precision, accuracy, statefulness and operational consequences when interacting with the wider cloud-native observability ecosystem. Finally, he will showcase options and tradeoffs when converting temporalities in the OpenTelemetry collector. By the end of this talk, you will be able to pick which strategy suits your own observability needs and specific architecture best.