OpenTelemetry Support

There are multiple ways to configure your OpenTelemetry SDK and send traces and spans to Sentry. They're described below.

If you use sentry-opentelemetry-agent, it will look for SENTRY_DSN and SENTRY_PROPERTIES_FILE environment variables to be defined, and then initialize Sentry automatically. You'll just need to configure your DSN and tracesSampleRate.

You can download the latest version of the sentry-opentelemetry-agent-7.8.0.jar from MavenCentral. It's also available as a ZIP containing the JAR used on this page on GitHub.

This java command shows how to run your application using sentry-opentelemetry-agent:

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SENTRY_PROPERTIES_FILE=sentry.properties java -javaagent:sentry-opentelemetry-agent-7.8.0.jar -jar your-application.jar

Here's the sentry.properties file that goes with it:

sentry.properties
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dsn=https://examplePublicKey@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0
traces-sample-rate=1.0

To enable debug logging in Sentry, set SENTRY_DEBUG=true as an environment variable or add debug=true to your sentry.properties.

To show debug output for OpenTelemetry, add -Dotel.javaagent.debug=true to the java command.

If you're using sentry-opentelemetry-agent but don't need to use OpenTelemetry exporters, add the following environment variables to turn off exporters and stop receiving error messages about servers not being reachable in the logs.

Example log message:

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ERROR io.opentelemetry.exporter.internal.grpc.OkHttpGrpcExporter - Failed to export spans. The request could not be executed. Full error message: Failed to connect to localhost/[0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1]:4317
ERROR io.opentelemetry.exporter.internal.grpc.OkHttpGrpcExporter - Failed to export metrics. The request could not be executed. Full error message: Failed to connect to localhost/[0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1]:4317

To turn off traces exporting, set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=none as an environment variable per OpenTelemetry GitHub.

To turn off metrics exporting, set OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=none as an environment variable per OpenTelemetry GitHub.

You may also disable automatic initialization of Sentry in sentry-opentelemetry-agent by setting SENTRY_AUTO_INIT=false as an environment variable. Doing this will mean you'll either have to use another Sentry integration that performs initialization, (for example Spring Boot), or initialize Sentry manually.

You can download the latest version of the sentry-opentelemetry-agent-7.8.0.jar from MavenCentral. It's also available as a ZIP containing the JAR used on this page on GitHub.

To ensure errors are properly linked to transactions that were created by the OpenTelemetry integration, you need an additional dependency:

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implementation 'io.sentry:sentry-opentelemetry-core:7.8.0'

If you're not using the auto initialization provided by sentry-opentelemetry-agent (SENTRY_AUTO_INIT=false), you have to set the instrumenter option to otel. This disables all Sentry instrumentation and uses the chosen OpenTelemetry tracers for creating spans instead. To ensure errors are properly linked to transactions that were created by the OpenTelemetry integration, add the OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor:

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import io.sentry.Instrumenter;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.opentelemetry.OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor;

Sentry.init(options -> {
  options.setDsn("https://examplePublicKey@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0");
  options.setTracesSampleRate(1.0);
  options.setInstrumenter(Instrumenter.OTEL);
  options.addEventProcessor(new OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor());
});

To enable debug logging in Sentry, set SENTRY_DEBUG=true as an environment variable or add debug=true to your sentry.properties.

To show debug output for OpenTelemetry, add -Dotel.javaagent.debug=true to the java command.

If you're using sentry-opentelemetry-agent but don't need to use OpenTelemetry exporters, add the following environment variables to turn off exporters and stop receiving error messages about servers not being reachable in the logs.

Example log message:

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ERROR io.opentelemetry.exporter.internal.grpc.OkHttpGrpcExporter - Failed to export spans. The request could not be executed. Full error message: Failed to connect to localhost/[0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1]:4317
ERROR io.opentelemetry.exporter.internal.grpc.OkHttpGrpcExporter - Failed to export metrics. The request could not be executed. Full error message: Failed to connect to localhost/[0:0:0:0:0:0:0:1]:4317

To turn off traces exporting, set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER=none as an environment variable per OpenTelemetry GitHub.

To turn off metrics exporting, set OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER=none as an environment variable per OpenTelemetry GitHub.

If the Java Agent approach isn't for you, you can manually initialize OpenTelemetry. We have a separate dependency for this use case that allows you to reuse classes used by sentry-opentelemetry-agent.

In addition to OpenTelemetry dependencies and your typical Sentry dependencies, you will need to add sentry-opentelemetry-core as a dependency:

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implementation 'io.sentry:sentry-opentelemetry-core:7.8.0'

You'll have to configure both OpenTelemetry and Sentry to see transactions in Sentry and have errors linked to transactions created by OpenTelemetry.

When manually initializing OpenTelemetry you have to add SentrySpanProcessor and SentryPropagator to your configuration.

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import io.opentelemetry.api.OpenTelemetry;
import io.opentelemetry.context.propagation.ContextPropagators;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.OpenTelemetrySdk;
import io.opentelemetry.sdk.trace.SdkTracerProvider;

import io.sentry.opentelemetry.SentryPropagator;
import io.sentry.opentelemetry.SentrySpanProcessor;


SdkTracerProvider sdkTracerProvider = SdkTracerProvider.builder()
    .addSpanProcessor(new SentrySpanProcessor())
    .build();

OpenTelemetry openTelemetry = OpenTelemetrySdk.builder()
    .setTracerProvider(sdkTracerProvider)
    .setPropagators(ContextPropagators.create(new SentryPropagator()))
    .buildAndRegisterGlobal();

You have to set the instrumenter option to otel. This disables all Sentry instrumentation and uses the chosen OpenTelemetry tracers for creating spans.

To ensure errors are properly linked to transactions that were created by the OpenTelemetry integration, add the OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor:

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import io.sentry.Instrumenter;
import io.sentry.Sentry;
import io.sentry.opentelemetry.OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor;

Sentry.init(options -> {
  options.setDsn("https://examplePublicKey@o0.ingest.sentry.io/0");
  options.setTracesSampleRate(1.0);
  options.setInstrumenter(Instrumenter.OTEL);
  options.addEventProcessor(new OpenTelemetryLinkErrorEventProcessor());
});

With Sentry’s OpenTelemetry SDK, an OpenTelemetry Span becomes a Sentry Transaction or Span. The first Span sent through the Sentry SpanProcessor is a Transaction, and any child Span gets attached to the first Transaction upon checking the parent Span context. This is true for the OpenTelemetry root Span and any top level Span in the system. For example, a request sent from frontend to backend will create an OpenTelemetry root Span with a corresponding Sentry Transaction. The backend request will create a new Sentry Transaction for the OpenTelemetry Span. The Sentry Transaction and Span are linked as a trace for navigation and error tracking purposes.

If you need more fine grained control over Sentry, take a look at the Configuration page. In case you'd like to filter out transactions before sending them to Sentry (to get rid of health checks, for example), you may find the Filtering page helpful.

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