cloudwatch-plugin-otel

Amazon CloudWatch plugin for OpenTelemetry.

Span metrics

The span metrics instrumentor registers a span processor that emits:

• traces.span.metrics.calls, a counter (unit {call}) incremented once per ended span.
• traces.span.metrics.duration, a histogram of span duration in seconds.

Both metrics use the cloudwatch.plugin.otel.span_metrics instrumentation scope. They include span.name, span.kind, status.code, and supported HTTP, RPC, database, messaging, and error semantic-convention attributes when those attributes are present on the span. service.name is carried by the metric's resource (the host SDK's resource), not duplicated on each datapoint.

The instrumentor also wraps the active root sampler. A DROP decision becomes RECORD_ONLY, allowing the span processor to derive metrics without changing which spans are exported.

Usage

Installing this package registers SpanMetricsInstrumentor as an opentelemetry_instrumentor entry point. It is loaded automatically when the application runs with OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation:

opentelemetry-instrument python app.py

It can also be enabled programmatically:

from plugins.opentelemetry.cloudwatch import SpanMetricsInstrumentor

SpanMetricsInstrumentor().instrument()

Pass tracer_provider or meter_provider to instrument() when using application-managed providers:

SpanMetricsInstrumentor().instrument(
    tracer_provider=tracer_provider,
    meter_provider=meter_provider,
)

The connector binds its meter when it is created. Configure the global MeterProvider, or pass meter_provider, before instrumenting so the derived metrics are recorded.

License

This project is licensed under the Apache-2.0 License. See LICENSE.