C++ Opentelemetry Instrumentation

This documentation contains instructions on how to set up OpenTelemetry(OTel) instrumentation in your C++ application. OpenTelemetry, also known as OTel for short, is an open-source observability framework that can help you generate and collect telemetry data - traces, metrics, and logs from your Swift application.

Once the telemetry data is generated, you can configure an exporter to send the data to SigNoz for monitoring and visualization.

There are three major steps to using OpenTelemetry:

Instrumenting your C++ application with OpenTelemetry
Configuring the exporter to send data to SigNoz
Validating the configuration to ensure that data is being sent as expected.

In this tutorial, we will instrument a C++ application for traces and send it to SigNoz.

Requirements

Bazel

Send Traces to SigNoz

Based on your application environment, you can choose the setup below to send traces to SigNoz.

Send traces to SigNoz Cloud via OTel Collector binary

Step 1 : Install OTel Collector

OTel Collector binary helps to collect logs, hostmetrics, resource and infra attributes. It is recommended to install Otel Collector binary to collect and send traces to SigNoz cloud. You can correlate signals and have rich contextual data through this way.

📝 Note

You can find instructions to install OTel Collector binary here in your VM. Once you are done setting up your OTel Collector binary, you can follow the below steps for instrumenting your C++ application.

Step 2 : Build opentelemetry-cpp locally

To configure your C++ application to send traces to OpenTelemetry you need to install opentelemetry-cpp and add it as dependency in your project.

Build opentelemetry-cpp locally using Bezel, following these steps:

Clone the opentelemetry-cpp source code.

git clone https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-cpp.git

Navigate to the repository cloned above, download the dependencies and build the source code:

cd opentelemetry-cpp
bazel build //...

Once Bazel tests are built, run them with bazel test //... command

bazel test //...

Step 3 : Instrument your application with OpenTelemetry

Add the following to BUILD file:

cc_binary(
    name = "<name>",
    srcs = [
        "<file_name>.cc",
    ],
    tags = [
        "examples",
        "otlp",
        "otlp_http",
    ],
    deps = [
        "//api",
        "//exporters/otlp:otlp_http_exporter",
        "//sdk/src/trace",
    ],
)

Add the following content to main.cpp:

#include <memory>
#include <string>
#include <utility>

#include "opentelemetry/exporters/otlp/otlp_environment.h"
#include "opentelemetry/exporters/otlp/otlp_http.h"
#include "opentelemetry/exporters/otlp/otlp_http_exporter_factory.h"
#include "opentelemetry/exporters/otlp/otlp_http_exporter_options.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/common/global_log_handler.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/trace/processor.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/trace/recordable.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/trace/simple_processor_factory.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/trace/tracer_provider.h"
#include "opentelemetry/sdk/trace/tracer_provider_factory.h"
#include "opentelemetry/trace/provider.h"
#include "opentelemetry/trace/span_id.h"
#include "opentelemetry/trace/tracer_provider.h"

namespace trace     = opentelemetry::trace;
namespace trace_sdk = opentelemetry::sdk::trace;
namespace otlp      = opentelemetry::exporter::otlp;

namespace internal_log = opentelemetry::sdk::common::internal_log;

namespace
{
opentelemetry::exporter::otlp::OtlpHttpExporterOptions opts;

std::shared_ptr<opentelemetry::sdk::trace::TracerProvider> provider;

void InitTracer()
{
  auto exporter  = otlp::OtlpHttpExporterFactory::Create(opts);
  auto processor = trace_sdk::SimpleSpanProcessorFactory::Create(std::move(exporter));
  provider       = trace_sdk::TracerProviderFactory::Create(std::move(processor));
  std::shared_ptr<opentelemetry::trace::TracerProvider> api_provider = provider;
  trace::Provider::SetTracerProvider(api_provider);
}

void CleanupTracer()
{
  // We call ForceFlush to prevent to cancel running exportings, It's optional.
  if (provider)
  {
    provider->ForceFlush();
  }

  provider.reset();
  std::shared_ptr<opentelemetry::trace::TracerProvider> none;
  trace::Provider::SetTracerProvider(none);
}
}  // namespace

int main()
{
  InitTracer();

  foo_library();

  CleanupTracer();
}

Step 4: Run app

Execute your application by issuing the run command:

bazel run <name>

Frequently Asked Questions

How to find what to use in IP of SigNoz if I have installed SigNoz in Kubernetes cluster?
Based on where you have installed your application and where you have installed SigNoz, you need to find the right value for this. Please use this grid to find the value you should use for IP of SigNoz
I am sending data from my application to SigNoz, but I don't see any events or graphs in the SigNoz dashboard. What should I do?
This could be because of one of the following reasons:
1. Your application is generating telemetry data, but not able to connect with SigNoz installation
  Please use this troubleshooting guide to find if your application is able to access SigNoz installation and send data to it.
2. Your application is not actually generating telemetry data
  Please check if the application is generating telemetry data first. You can use Console Exporter to just print your telemetry data in console first. Join our Slack Community if you need help on how to export your telemetry data in console
3. Your SigNoz installation is not running or behind a firewall
  Please double check if the pods in SigNoz installation are running fine. docker ps or kubectl get pods -n platform are your friends for this.

What Cloud Endpoint Should I Use?

The primary method for sending data to SigNoz Cloud is through OTLP exporters. You can either send the data directly from your application using the exporters available in SDKs/language agents or send the data to a collector agent, which batches/enriches telemetry and sends it to the Cloud.

My Collector Sends Data to SigNoz Cloud

Using gRPC Exporter

The endpoint should be ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu. Note that the exporter endpoint doesn't require a scheme for the gRPC exporter in the collector.

# Sample config with `us` region
exporters:
    otlp:
        endpoint: "ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443"
        tls:
            insecure: false
        headers:
            "signoz-ingestion-key": "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>"

Using HTTP Exporter

The endpoint should be https://ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu. Note that the endpoint includes the scheme https for the HTTP exporter in the collector.

# Sample config with `us` region
exporters:
    otlphttp:
        endpoint: "https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443"
        tls:
            insecure: false
        headers:
            "signoz-ingestion-key": "<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>"

My Application Sends Data to SigNoz Cloud

The endpoint should be configured either with environment variables or in the SDK setup code.

Using Environment Variables

Using gRPC Exporter

Examples with us region

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=grpc OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443 OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>

Using HTTP Exporter

OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_PROTOCOL=http/protobuf OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=https://ingest.us.signoz.cloud:443 OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS=signoz-ingestion-key=<SIGNOZ_INGESTION_KEY>

Configuring Endpoint in Code

Please refer to the agent documentation.

Sending Data from a Third-Party Service

The endpoint configuration here depends on the export protocol supported by the third-party service. They may support either gRPC, HTTP, or both. Generally, you will need to adjust the host and port. The host address should be ingest.{region}.signoz.cloud:443, where {region} should be replaced with in, us, or eu, and port 443 should be used.

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Requirements

Send Traces to SigNoz

Send traces to SigNoz Cloud via OTel Collector binary

Send Traces to Self-Hosted SigNoz via Otel Collector

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