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Core concepts

A small mental model goes a long way. avuru obs is built on OpenTelemetry concepts, so if you know OTel, you already know most of this.

Signals​

A signal is a category of telemetry. avuru obs handles four:

  • Traces — the path of a request across services, as a tree of spans.
  • Metrics — numeric measurements over time (counters, gauges, histograms).
  • Logs — timestamped events, ideally carrying a trace_id.
  • Profiles — continuous CPU/heap samples, attributed to code.

All four are stored together in ClickHouse, which is what makes cross-signal correlation cheap.

Context & propagation​

Context is the metadata that ties signals together — most importantly the trace_id and span_id. When a service calls another, that context is propagated over the wire (W3C traceparent header for HTTP, metadata for gRPC). That propagation is what lets a single trace span many services.

avuru obs gets context two ways:

  1. eBPF (zero-code). The sensor runs upstream OBI to capture zero-code traces, and the service map is derived from those spans — no propagation headers required.
  2. OTLP (full fidelity). For full distributed traces with span attributes, propagate context with an OpenTelemetry SDK or auto-instrumentation and export OTLP to the gateway.

:::note Service map today The service map's edges are derived from trace spans (cross-service Client/Server pairs). To cover un-instrumented services and add per-edge network health, enable OBI's built-in network feature — a config toggle, not a separate agent. See Feature status. :::

:::info eBPF vs SDK — which do I need? The eBPF sensor gives you the service map and RED metrics for free. Add an OTLP SDK only where you want rich, in-process spans (DB statements, business attributes, custom events). They compose — eBPF and OTLP spans share the same storage. :::

Correlation​

Because every signal shares trace_id and resource attributes (service name, namespace, pod), you can pivot from a slow trace → its logs → the metrics for that endpoint → a CPU profile, without leaving the request's context.

Resource attributes​

A resource describes what produced the telemetry: service.name, k8s.namespace.name, k8s.pod.name, and so on. avuru obs follows OTel semantic conventions so these attributes are consistent across signals and across integrations.

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