Send Ruby application data to Observe¶

This page describes how to install the Observe Agent, then instrument your Ruby applications to send data to Observe.

To view the list of auto-instrumented libraries and compatible versions, see opentelemetry-instrumentation-all.gemspec in the OpenTelemetry documentation on GitHub.

To manually instrument custom logic, see Instrumentation in the OpenTelemetry documentation.

Get the Observe Agent¶

Use the Add Data portal in the product to get the Observe Agent installed in your environment.

From the left navigation rail, select Data & integrations > Add data.
In the Observe Agent section, pick your environment, then follow the instructions to create a data ingest token and install the Observe Agent.

Add the OpenTelemetry auto-instrumentation for Ruby¶

First, acquire the dependencies:

bundle add opentelemetry-sdk \
opentelemetry-instrumentation-all \
opentelemetry-exporter-otlp

Now initialize the instrumentation. For a Rails application, create a file named config/initializers/opentelemetry.rb with the following code:

# config/initializers/opentelemetry.rb
require 'opentelemetry/sdk'
require 'opentelemetry/instrumentation/all'
require 'opentelemetry-exporter-otlp'
OpenTelemetry::SDK.configure do |c|  c.use_all() # enables all instrumentation!end

For other types of Ruby services (i.e., not Rails), perform this initialization as early as possible in the start-up process.

Configure the Ruby instrumentation¶

Set the following environment variables. Replace the placeholders such as ${YOUR_SERVICE_NAME} with the actual information from your environment.

OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=${YOUR_SERVICE_NAME}
OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment=${YOUR_APP_ENVIRONMENT}
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://${YOUR_OBSERVE_AGENT_ENDPOINT}:4318 

(Optional) Name GraphQL endpoints by operation¶

By default, the instrumentation discovers a single GraphQL endpoint, named GraphqlController#execute.

If you’re using GraphQL and Rack with Ruby, want more detailed GraphQL endpoint names, use this during initialization of the OpenTelemetry SDK:

c.use_all('OpenTelemetry::Instrumentation::GraphQL' => {
    enable_platform_field: true,
    enable_platform_authorized: true,
    enable_platform_resolve_type: true,
    legacy_platform_span_names:true,
    legacy_tracing: true
    })

Then add this code in your Rack controller:

rack_span = OpenTelemetry::Trace.current_span
rack_span.name = <your preferred span name>

Example code to name the span according to the GraphQL operation:

def transaction_name(query)
selected_op = query.selected_operation
txn_name = if selected_op
    op_type = selected_op.operation_type
    op_name = selected_op.name || fallback_transaction_name(query.context) || "anonymous"
    "#{op_type}.#{op_name}"
else
    "query.anonymous"
end
"GraphQL/#{txn_name}"
end

(Optional) Name Sidekiq endpoints by class¶

By default, the instrumentation names Sidekiq endpoints by operation name and destination.

To instead identify Sidekiq endpoints by job class, use this during initialization of the OpenTelemetry SDK:

c.use_all('OpenTelemetry::Instrumentation::Sidekiq' => {
    span_naming: "job_class"
    })

Run your instrumented app¶

rails server -p 8080

Next steps¶

Navigate to Traces in your Observe tenant to view traces from your application.

Troubleshooting¶

What to do if you encounter the following issues:

Your application data is not reaching Observe
Your ports are blocked by a firewall
You are getting duplicate spans in Observe

My application data is not reaching Observe¶

If your data is not showing up in Observe, first verify that Observe Agent is receiving data from your application. See Troubleshooting the Observe Agent.

Common reasons why the Observe agent is not receiving traces from your application:

Ports blocked by firewall¶

Ensure that any firewalls within the same network as your app and collector are configured to allow traffic on ports 4317 and 4318. The application instrumentation uses these ports to communicate with the Observe agent.

I am getting duplicate spans in Observe¶

If you’re seeing multiple spans with the same span_id in the Trace Explorer, the cause may be the following:

Multiple layers of OTel instrumentation for the same spans
Multiple exporters configured (either in your Agent, OTel collector, or application code) that point to Observe
Some other pathway in your environment is duplicating data (e.g., proxy or load balancer)