AWS X-Ray Shifts to OpenTelemetry

Key Highlights

• AWS announces the transition of AWS X-Ray to OpenTelemetry for application tracing and observability
• The AWS X-Ray SDKs and Daemon will enter maintenance mode on February 25, 2026
• OpenTelemetry is now the recommended observability solution for instrumenting cloud applications

The move to OpenTelemetry reflects broader industry trends towards adopting open standards for observability and application tracing. This shift enables developers to instrument their applications in a more standardized and vendor-agnostic way, making it easier to integrate with other systems and tools. As Jonathan Lee and Naina Thangaraj note, “OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation solutions are recommended for producing traces from applications and sending them to AWS X-Ray.”

Understanding the Transition

The transition to OpenTelemetry is a significant change for developers who have been using AWS X-Ray for application tracing and observability. However, it’s essential to understand that the existing X-Ray console experience and functionality will continue to be fully supported and remain unchanged. Developers can use either the CloudWatch agent or the OpenTelemetry collector to collect traces from their instrumented applications and send them to X-Ray. This flexibility ensures a smooth transition and allows developers to choose the approach that best fits their needs.

The benefits of using OpenTelemetry are numerous, including the ability to trace requests across diverse systems, including those outside AWS. This is particularly important for developers who need to integrate their applications with other services and systems. As Luc van Donkersgoed comments, “OpenTelemetry is awesome, and AWS knows it.” The adoption of OpenTelemetry is a clear indication that AWS is committed to providing developers with the best possible tools and solutions for building and managing their applications.

Implementing OpenTelemetry

To help developers migrate from X-Ray to OpenTelemetry instrumentation, AWS has produced a comprehensive guide. The guide provides step-by-step instructions and best practices for instrumenting applications with OpenTelemetry. Some key features of OpenTelemetry include:

• Distributed tracing: allows developers to trace requests across multiple services and systems
• Metrics: provides detailed metrics and insights into application performance
• Logging: enables developers to collect and analyze log data from their applications

By adopting OpenTelemetry, developers can take advantage of these features and more, ensuring that their applications are well-instrumented and easy to manage.

Conclusion

The transition of AWS X-Ray to OpenTelemetry is a significant development in the world of cloud computing and observability. As Corey Quinn notes, “AWS is deprecating X-Ray SDKs for OpenTelemetry, which is actually the right move, because open standards beat vendor lock-in.” By adopting OpenTelemetry, AWS is providing developers with a more standardized and flexible solution for application tracing and observability. With the right tools and guidance, developers can ensure a smooth transition and take advantage of the benefits that OpenTelemetry has to offer.

Source: Official Link