OpenTelemetry Demo Application

The OpenTelemetry Demo is a microservices-based e-commerce application that generates realistic logs, metrics, and traces. It’s a great way to see Lakerunner in action with real-world telemetry.

What You Get

The demo deploys a full e-commerce application with services written in multiple languages (Go, Java, Python, Node.js, .NET, and more). Each service is instrumented with OpenTelemetry and generates:

Logs from application output
Metrics from runtime instrumentation and kubelet stats
Traces spanning the full request lifecycle across services

Prerequisites

A running Lakerunner installation (see the Quick Start)
Kustomize or kubectl with built-in kustomize support
A Cardinal API key (from your Cardinal dashboard )

Installation

1. Create the namespace


kubectl create namespace otel-demo

2. Create the Helm values file

Create a values.yaml that configures the demo to export telemetry to your Cardinal endpoint:


default:
  envOverrides:
    - name: OTEL_METRIC_EXPORT_INTERVAL
      value: "10000"
    - name: OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES
      value: "k8s.namespace.name=otel-demo,k8s.cluster.name=YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME"
 
opentelemetry-collector:
  config:
    exporters:
      otlphttp/cardinal:
        endpoint: https://otelhttp.intake.YOUR_REGION.aws.cardinalhq.io
        headers:
          x-cardinalhq-api-key: YOUR_API_KEY
    service:
      pipelines:
        traces:
          exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal, spanmetrics]
        metrics:
          exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal]
        logs:
          exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal]
 
# Disable built-in observability backends — Lakerunner replaces them
jaeger:
  enabled: false
prometheus:
  enabled: false
grafana:
  enabled: false
opensearch:
  enabled: false

Replace YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME, YOUR_REGION, and YOUR_API_KEY with your actual values.

3. Install with Helm


helm install otel-demo opentelemetry-demo \
  --repo https://open-telemetry.github.io/opentelemetry-helm-charts \
  --version 0.38.6 \
  --namespace otel-demo \
  --values values.yaml

4. Add kubelet stats collection (optional)

To also collect node-level metrics from the demo cluster, deploy a lightweight kubelet stats collector:


# kubeletstats-collector-config.yaml
apiVersion: v1
kind: ConfigMap
metadata:
  name: kubeletstats-collector
  namespace: otel-demo
data:
  config.yaml: |
    receivers:
      kubeletstats:
        auth_type: serviceAccount
        collection_interval: 10s
        endpoint: https://${env:NODE_IP}:10250
        insecure_skip_verify: true
        metric_groups: [node, pod, container]
 
    processors:
      k8sattributes:
        passthrough: false
        pod_association:
          - sources:
              - from: resource_attribute
                name: k8s.pod.uid
        extract:
          labels:
            - tag_name: service.name
              key: opentelemetry.io/name
              from: pod
      resource:
        attributes:
          - key: k8s.cluster.name
            value: YOUR_CLUSTER_NAME
            action: upsert
      batch: {}
 
    exporters:
      otlphttp/cardinal:
        endpoint: https://otelhttp.intake.YOUR_REGION.aws.cardinalhq.io
        headers:
          x-cardinalhq-api-key: ${env:CARDINAL_API_KEY}
 
    service:
      pipelines:
        metrics:
          receivers: [kubeletstats]
          processors: [k8sattributes, resource, batch]
          exporters: [otlphttp/cardinal]

Deploy the collector as a DaemonSet:


# kubeletstats-collector-daemonset.yaml
apiVersion: apps/v1
kind: DaemonSet
metadata:
  name: kubeletstats-collector
  namespace: otel-demo
spec:
  selector:
    matchLabels:
      app: kubeletstats-collector
  template:
    metadata:
      labels:
        app: kubeletstats-collector
    spec:
      serviceAccountName: kubeletstats-collector
      containers:
        - name: collector
          image: otel/opentelemetry-collector-contrib:0.146.1
          args: ["--config=/etc/otelcol/config.yaml"]
          env:
            - name: NODE_IP
              valueFrom:
                fieldRef:
                  fieldPath: status.hostIP
            - name: CARDINAL_API_KEY
              valueFrom:
                secretKeyRef:
                  name: kubeletstats-collector
                  key: api-key
          resources:
            requests:
              cpu: 50m
              memory: 64Mi
            limits:
              cpu: 200m
              memory: 256Mi
          volumeMounts:
            - name: config
              mountPath: /etc/otelcol
              readOnly: true
      volumes:
        - name: config
          configMap:
            name: kubeletstats-collector

5. Verify in Grafana

Open Grafana (see Quick Start step 6) and navigate to Explore. You should see:

Logs from the demo services
Metrics including application metrics and kubelet stats
Traces spanning the full request lifecycle across services

Reach out to support@cardinalhq.io for support or to ask questions not answered in our documentation.