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New OpenTelemetry Network Protocol OpAMP - Game Changer for DevOps and Observability

Paul Stefanski
observIQ

Observability is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today — by both market size and data volume. Since the 90s, cloud monitoring has become a must-have for businesses in nearly every sector, not just technology. The exponentially increasing size of cloud infrastructures and data volume is creating two bubbles for customers seeking to collect and generate value from their data. Both are ready to burst. Both of these problems relate to how data collection agents are configured and managed, and new open source technologies by industry leaders are seeking to change the paradigm.

OpenTelemetry, a collaborative open source observability project, has introduced a new network protocol that addresses the infrastructure management headache, coupled with collector configuration options to filter and reduce data volume. Open Agent Management Protocol (OpAmp) is a new network protocol by the OpenTelemetry project that enables remote management of OpenTelemetry collectors (agents). In simple terms, it's a free and open source technology that dramatically reduces the effort and complexity of deploying and managing agents and data pipelines for DevOps teams.

Why is OpenTelemetry's OpAmp special?

It offers a simple and versatile method for remotely configuring and maintaining telemetry agents across massive environments with very little overhead. This is particularly useful for large cloud environments, and headless environments, where agent management would otherwise require manual management of every agent on every server.

OpAMP also enables agents to report information to multiple remote management destinations simultaneously, such as their status, properties, connections, configuration, operating system, version, agent CPU and RAM usage, data collection rate, and more. OpAMP can integrate with access credential management systems to keep environments secure. It also has a secure auto-update capability that makes maintaining large environments easy.

Similar technology is available through a handful of proprietary technologies, but the addition of OpAMP to OpenTelemetry is the launch point for industry-wide, vendor-agnostic adoption of the technology. Keeping with the open source mission, observability vendors collaborate on overarching technologies that benefit the whole industry, and focus independently on servicing specific niches.

That's what makes OpAMP so unique — as an open source technology built by experts from every major telemetry organization, it's completely vendor agnostic. It's available now as part of OpenTelemetry, but it's not dependent on OpenTelemetry as a whole.

OpAMP can be used to manage many agent types. Agents can collect data from any platform in any environment, and ship data to any, or multiple, data management or analysis platforms. Say you prefer a specific tool for data analysis, but another unrelated tool for data storage, and you also maintain an environment with servers across multiple cloud platforms; with OpAMP, you can manage different agent types across multiple environments through one place. Some agents, like OpenTelemetry agents, can ship to many analysis and storage tools simultaneously, and filter where specific data goes based on your configuration. With OpAMP, those agents and configurations are easily and remotely manageable at any scale, from source to destination.

OpenTelemetry is not meant to overrule or undercut any existing telemetry solutions. In fact it's exactly the opposite — it gives end users the freedom to use exactly the tools they want for their specific needs in conjunction with each other. As the observability industry continues to grow, and data volume swells, foundational technologies like OpAMP are critical to maintaining manageable technology infrastructures for both vendors and customers alike.

Paul Stefanski is Product Marketing Manager at observIQ

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New OpenTelemetry Network Protocol OpAMP - Game Changer for DevOps and Observability

Paul Stefanski
observIQ

Observability is one of the fastest growing industries in the world today — by both market size and data volume. Since the 90s, cloud monitoring has become a must-have for businesses in nearly every sector, not just technology. The exponentially increasing size of cloud infrastructures and data volume is creating two bubbles for customers seeking to collect and generate value from their data. Both are ready to burst. Both of these problems relate to how data collection agents are configured and managed, and new open source technologies by industry leaders are seeking to change the paradigm.

OpenTelemetry, a collaborative open source observability project, has introduced a new network protocol that addresses the infrastructure management headache, coupled with collector configuration options to filter and reduce data volume. Open Agent Management Protocol (OpAmp) is a new network protocol by the OpenTelemetry project that enables remote management of OpenTelemetry collectors (agents). In simple terms, it's a free and open source technology that dramatically reduces the effort and complexity of deploying and managing agents and data pipelines for DevOps teams.

Why is OpenTelemetry's OpAmp special?

It offers a simple and versatile method for remotely configuring and maintaining telemetry agents across massive environments with very little overhead. This is particularly useful for large cloud environments, and headless environments, where agent management would otherwise require manual management of every agent on every server.

OpAMP also enables agents to report information to multiple remote management destinations simultaneously, such as their status, properties, connections, configuration, operating system, version, agent CPU and RAM usage, data collection rate, and more. OpAMP can integrate with access credential management systems to keep environments secure. It also has a secure auto-update capability that makes maintaining large environments easy.

Similar technology is available through a handful of proprietary technologies, but the addition of OpAMP to OpenTelemetry is the launch point for industry-wide, vendor-agnostic adoption of the technology. Keeping with the open source mission, observability vendors collaborate on overarching technologies that benefit the whole industry, and focus independently on servicing specific niches.

That's what makes OpAMP so unique — as an open source technology built by experts from every major telemetry organization, it's completely vendor agnostic. It's available now as part of OpenTelemetry, but it's not dependent on OpenTelemetry as a whole.

OpAMP can be used to manage many agent types. Agents can collect data from any platform in any environment, and ship data to any, or multiple, data management or analysis platforms. Say you prefer a specific tool for data analysis, but another unrelated tool for data storage, and you also maintain an environment with servers across multiple cloud platforms; with OpAMP, you can manage different agent types across multiple environments through one place. Some agents, like OpenTelemetry agents, can ship to many analysis and storage tools simultaneously, and filter where specific data goes based on your configuration. With OpAMP, those agents and configurations are easily and remotely manageable at any scale, from source to destination.

OpenTelemetry is not meant to overrule or undercut any existing telemetry solutions. In fact it's exactly the opposite — it gives end users the freedom to use exactly the tools they want for their specific needs in conjunction with each other. As the observability industry continues to grow, and data volume swells, foundational technologies like OpAMP are critical to maintaining manageable technology infrastructures for both vendors and customers alike.

Paul Stefanski is Product Marketing Manager at observIQ

Hot Topics

The Latest

As businesses increasingly rely on high-performance applications to deliver seamless user experiences, the demand for fast, reliable, and scalable data storage systems has never been greater. Redis — an open-source, in-memory data structure store — has emerged as a popular choice for use cases ranging from caching to real-time analytics. But with great performance comes the need for vigilant monitoring ...

Kubernetes was not initially designed with AI's vast resource variability in mind, and the rapid rise of AI has exposed Kubernetes limitations, particularly when it comes to cost and resource efficiency. Indeed, AI workloads differ from traditional applications in that they require a staggering amount and variety of compute resources, and their consumption is far less consistent than traditional workloads ... Considering the speed of AI innovation, teams cannot afford to be bogged down by these constant infrastructure concerns. A solution is needed ...

AI is the catalyst for significant investment in data teams as enterprises require higher-quality data to power their AI applications, according to the State of Analytics Engineering Report from dbt Labs ...

Misaligned architecture can lead to business consequences, with 93% of respondents reporting negative outcomes such as service disruptions, high operational costs and security challenges ...

A Gartner analyst recently suggested that GenAI tools could create 25% time savings for network operational teams. Where might these time savings come from? How are GenAI tools helping NetOps teams today, and what other tasks might they take on in the future as models continue improving? In general, these savings come from automating or streamlining manual NetOps tasks ...

IT and line-of-business teams are increasingly aligned in their efforts to close the data gap and drive greater collaboration to alleviate IT bottlenecks and offload growing demands on IT teams, according to The 2025 Automation Benchmark Report: Insights from IT Leaders on Enterprise Automation & the Future of AI-Driven Businesses from Jitterbit ...

A large majority (86%) of data management and AI decision makers cite protecting data privacy as a top concern, with 76% of respondents citing ROI on data privacy and AI initiatives across their organization, according to a new Harris Poll from Collibra ...

According to Gartner, Inc. the following six trends will shape the future of cloud over the next four years, ultimately resulting in new ways of working that are digital in nature and transformative in impact ...

2020 was the equivalent of a wedding with a top-shelf open bar. As businesses scrambled to adjust to remote work, digital transformation accelerated at breakneck speed. New software categories emerged overnight. Tech stacks ballooned with all sorts of SaaS apps solving ALL the problems — often with little oversight or long-term integration planning, and yes frequently a lot of duplicated functionality ... But now the music's faded. The lights are on. Everyone from the CIO to the CFO is checking the bill. Welcome to the Great SaaS Hangover ...

Regardless of OpenShift being a scalable and flexible software, it can be a pain to monitor since complete visibility into the underlying operations is not guaranteed ... To effectively monitor an OpenShift environment, IT administrators should focus on these five key elements and their associated metrics ...