OpenTelemetry Setup

There are multiple ways to configure our OpenTelemetry integration. You may chose between using our Java Agent or using one of our agentless dependencies.

Java Agent

This is our recommended way of setting up Sentry with OpenTelemetry as it offers the broadest support for frameworks and libraries.

The sentry-opentelemetry-agent makes use of the java command's -javaagent argument. This Java Agent will run some code before starting your application, configuring OpenTelemetry and Sentry and also dynamically injects bytecode into your application.

The injected code allows OpenTelemetry and by extension also Sentry to:

• Instrument your application by creating spans around things like HTTP requests, database queries, and many more.
• Propagate OpenTelemetry Context and Sentry Scopes through libraries
• Extract tracing information from incoming requests and consumed messages
• Inject tracing information into outgoing requests and produced messages

The sentry-opentelemetry-agent is packaged as a JAR file and is separate from your applications JAR / WAR file. This means you will have to manage the version on your server and upgrade it whenever you upgrade the Sentry SDK dependency in your application should you have it.

Since sentry-opentelemetry-agent is based on opentelemetry-agent, you may also find OpenTelmetry docs helpful.

For a guide on how to set up sentry-opentelemetry-agent, please have a look at the detailed Agent docs.

Agentless

We also offer a way of using Sentry with OpenTelemetry that does not require a Java Agent but instead makes use of a dependency that can be packaged with your application.

For a guide on how to set up agentless, please have a look at the detailed Agentless docs.