OpenTelemetry is a vendor-agnostic, open source framework for observability that is hosted as an incubating project by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF). It aims to provide insights into complex distributed applications, which is crucial for efficient and reliable operations. Observability, which encompasses traces, metrics, logs, and other telemetry data, has become an essential practice for applications in production environments, and integrating it early in the development cycle is highly recommended.
The OpenTelemetry project’s mission is to make high-quality, portable telemetry accessible, enabling organizations to perform accelerated analysis and respond faster to incidents. Through APIs, SDKs, and technology, it extracts signals from any source, processes them, and sends them to any destination. This framework is becoming increasingly important, as OpenTelemetry is the second most active CNCF project after Kubernetes. Many vendors, including major observability and APM providers, have adopted OpenTelemetry, further driving the ecosystem’s growth.
Last year, they launched the OpenTelemetry on the Mainframe Special Interest Group, which aims to enhance end-to-end observability and support mainframe integration in hybrid cloud environments as well as integrate mainframe telemetry into observability solutions in an open standard format. By doing so, it simplifies observing and integrating the mainframe with modern observability systems.
The OpenTelemetry on Mainframe SIG focuses on three key topics to enhance the export and consumption of mainframe-generated telemetry:
- Mapping mainframe concepts to OpenTelemetry Semantic Conventions,
- Developing code instrumentation for mainframe-specific languages like COBOL and PL/1, and
- Enhancing the OpenTelemetry Collector to support mainframe telemetry.
Contributing to the OpenTelemetry project and the SIG OpenTelemetry on Mainframe offers multiple opportunities for involvement. Contributions are welcome from a wide range of experts, including those experienced with mainframe technologies, observability, monitoring, performance, virtualization, and developers familiar with languages like Assembler, COBOL, PL/1, and REXX. Newcomers and returnees interested in mainframe technology are also encouraged to participate. To contribute, please get approval from your organization under the CNCF Contribution License Agreement (EasyCLA).
New Survey
We are excited to announce the launch of a new survey that seeks input from mainframe users, observability solution users, developers, site reliability engineers, architects, and other experts to better understand priorities for implementing OpenTelemetry on mainframes. Your feedback will help us prioritize activities to accelerate adoption, such as porting SDKs for code instrumentation or defining platform-specific Semantic Conventions.
The survey consists of two sections and will take approximately 15 minutes to complete. Results will be published, including a prioritized list of activities.
