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Observability Stack

Sending Data from the OpenTelemetry Demo to the Observability Stack

The OpenTelemetry Demo is a microservices e-commerce app (the Astronomy Shop) that emits logs, traces, and metrics across services written in Go, Python, Java, .NET, Node.js, Ruby, PHP, and C++. Enable it in Observability Stack to explore the stack with realistic telemetry before you instrument your own services.

The demo ships as an opt-in Docker Compose include file. The stack runs the OTel Collector, Data Prepper, OpenSearch, Prometheus, and OpenSearch Dashboards; enabling the demo adds the Astronomy Shop services and points their telemetry at that pipeline.

Install and enable the demo

Section titled “Install and enable the demo”

Enabling the demo depends on how you install Observability Stack:

  • Docker Compose: follow the installation guide and uncomment INCLUDE_COMPOSE_OTEL_DEMO in .env.
  • Kubernetes (Helm): set opentelemetry-demo.enabled=true (for example, --set opentelemetry-demo.enabled=true). See Kubernetes (Helm).

For Docker Compose, the demo image version is pinned by DEMO_VERSION in .env. Change that value to run a different release.

Generate and view telemetry

Section titled “Generate and view telemetry”

The demo’s load generator drives traffic automatically, so telemetry starts flowing without any manual steps. To browse the app yourself, open the web store at http://localhost:8080/. Then open OpenSearch Dashboards to explore the data.

Service telemetry dashboard

Section titled “Service telemetry dashboard”

The Astronomy shop - service telemetry dashboard is created for you automatically. Open it from Dashboards. It correlates logs and metrics across the demo services: request rate by service, instrumentation SDK breakdown, log volume by severity, log throughput over time, and per-service CPU, memory, and thread counts. Filter by service name or SDK language using the controls at the top.

Astronomy Shop service telemetry dashboard in OpenSearch Dashboards, showing request rate, instrumentation SDK breakdown, log volume, log throughput over time, and CPU, memory, and thread panels.

Application performance (APM)

Section titled “Application performance (APM)”

Open Services under Application performance to see the trace-derived service catalog: P50/P90/P99 latency, throughput, and failure rate per service, top services and dependency paths by fault rate, and SLO health. From any row, jump to that service’s spans, logs, or service map. See Application Performance Monitoring for service maps, SLOs, and the rest of the APM workflow.

APM Services view showing top services and dependency paths by fault rate, SLO health summary, and a service catalog with latency, throughput, and failure rate per service.

Access points

Section titled “Access points”
URLWhat it is
http://localhost:8080/Web store (frontend)
http://localhost:8080/loadgen/Load generator UI
http://localhost:8080/featureFeature flag UI
http://localhost:5601OpenSearch Dashboards

Use the feature flag UI to toggle the demo’s built-in failure scenarios (for example, a payment or cart fault) and watch the error rate change in the dashboards and APM views.

How the data flows

Section titled “How the data flows”
flowchart LR
    Demo[Astronomy Shop services] --> Collector[OTel Collector]
    Collector --> DataPrepper[Data Prepper]
    Collector --> Prometheus[Prometheus]
    DataPrepper --> OpenSearch[OpenSearch]
    OpenSearch --> Dashboards[OpenSearch Dashboards]
    Prometheus --> Dashboards

Services export OTLP to the Collector. The Collector sends logs and traces to Data Prepper, which indexes them into OpenSearch, and sends metrics to Prometheus. OpenSearch Dashboards reads from both.

Troubleshooting

Section titled “Troubleshooting”
  • Services restart or exit on startup. Usually the container runtime is short on memory. Raise its limit to at least 8 GB.
  • Dashboards are empty. Give the load generator a minute to produce data, then widen the dashboard time range. Confirm the demo services are up with docker compose ps.

Next steps

Section titled “Next steps”