Beyond OTLP - Unlocking the Potential of OS-native Tracing

Explore advanced telemetry export mechanisms beyond the standard OTLP protocol in this 27-minute conference talk from CNCF. Discover how OS-native tracing systems like ETW (Event Tracing for Windows) and Linux user_events can overcome the limitations of traditional OTLP networking approaches, including CPU contention, memory overhead, potential data loss during crashes, and complex retry handling. Learn how these kernel-backed buffer systems enable synchronous telemetry export without batching or network stack overhead, delivering exceptional performance and reliability. Understand the implementation of dynamic, on-demand telemetry that can be enabled or disabled without system restarts or redeployments, making it ideal for large-scale systems requiring minimal overhead when telemetry is inactive. Gain insights into integrating ETW and user_events with OpenTelemetry without requiring re-instrumentation, and see how event listeners such as the OTel Collector can forward data via OTLP while preserving existing pipelines and enabling advanced observability features like call stack capture and event-triggered actions such as process dumps.