OpenTelemetry in Production: Unified Observability Collection with Auto-Instrumentation, Collector & Tail Sampling
This guide covers end-to-end OpenTelemetry implementation for unified observability, including zero-code auto-instrumentation via Kubernetes Operator, Collector deployment patterns with memory limiting and batch processing, head/tail sampling strategies for cost control, migration from Jaeger/Prometheus, log collection with trace correlation, and six critical production pitfalls to avoid.
