@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk

What is @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk?

@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk is an npm package that provides automatic instrumentation for AWS SDK clients using OpenTelemetry. This allows developers to collect and export telemetry data such as traces and metrics from AWS SDK operations, which can be used for monitoring and observability purposes.

What are @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk's main functionalities?

Automatic Tracing

This feature allows you to automatically trace AWS SDK operations. The code sample demonstrates how to set up the NodeTracerProvider and register the AWS SDK instrumentation.

const { NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node');
const { AwsInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk');
const { registerInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation');

const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();
provider.register();

registerInstrumentations({
  instrumentations: [
    new AwsInstrumentation({
      // Optional configuration
    })
  ],
  tracerProvider: provider,
});

Custom Configuration

This feature allows you to customize the instrumentation behavior. The code sample shows how to configure hooks to add custom attributes to spans before and after AWS SDK requests.

const { AwsInstrumentation } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk');

const awsInstrumentation = new AwsInstrumentation({
  suppressInternalInstrumentation: true,
  preRequestHook: (span, request) => {
    span.setAttribute('aws.requestId', request.requestId);
  },
  postRequestHook: (span, response) => {
    span.setAttribute('aws.statusCode', response.statusCode);
  }
});

Other packages similar to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk

@opentelemetry/instrumentation-http

This package provides automatic instrumentation for HTTP clients and servers using OpenTelemetry. It is similar to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk in that it collects and exports telemetry data, but it focuses on HTTP operations rather than AWS SDK operations.

aws-xray-sdk

The AWS X-Ray SDK provides automatic instrumentation for AWS services and HTTP clients. It is similar to @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk in that it collects telemetry data for AWS SDK operations, but it uses AWS X-Ray for tracing instead of OpenTelemetry.

README

OpenTelemetry aws-sdk Instrumentation for Node.js

component owners: @carolabadeer @blumamir

This module provides automatic instrumentation for the aws-sdk v2 and @aws-sdk v3 modules, which may be loaded using the @opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node package and is included in the @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node bundle.

If total installation size is not constrained, it is recommended to use the @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node bundle with @opentelemetry/sdk-node for the most seamless instrumentation experience.

Installation

npm install --save @opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk

Usage

For further automatic instrumentation instruction see the @opentelemetry/instrumentation package.

const { NodeTracerProvider } = require("@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node");
const { registerInstrumentations } = require("@opentelemetry/instrumentation");
const {
  AwsInstrumentation,
} = require("@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-sdk");

const provider = new NodeTracerProvider();
provider.register();

registerInstrumentations({
  instrumentations: [
    new AwsInstrumentation({
      // see under for available configuration
    }),
  ],
});

aws-sdk Instrumentation Options

aws-sdk instrumentation has few options available to choose from. You can set the following:

Options	Type	Description
preRequestHook	AwsSdkRequestCustomAttributeFunction	Hook called before request send, which allow to add custom attributes to span.
responseHook	AwsSdkResponseCustomAttributeFunction	Hook for adding custom attributes when response is received from aws.
sqsProcessHook	AwsSdkSqsProcessCustomAttributeFunction	Hook called after starting sqs process span (for each sqs received message), which allow to add custom attributes to it.
suppressInternalInstrumentation	boolean	Most aws operation use http requests under the hood. Set this to true to hide all underlying http spans.
sqsExtractContextPropagationFromPayload	boolean	Will parse and extract context propagation headers from SQS Payload, false by default. When should it be used?

Span Attributes

Both V2 and V3 instrumentations are collecting the following attributes:

Attribute Name	Type	Description	Example
rpc.system	string	Always equals "aws-api"
rpc.method	string	he name of the operation corresponding to the request, as returned by the AWS SDK. If the SDK does not provide a way to retrieve a name, the name of the command SHOULD be used, removing the suffix Command if present, resulting in a PascalCase name with no spaces.	PutObject
rpc.service	string	The name of the service to which a request is made, as returned by the AWS SDK. If the SDK does not provide a away to retrieve a name, the name of the SDK's client interface for a service SHOULD be used, removing the suffix Client if present, resulting in a PascalCase name with no spaces.	S3, DynamoDB, Route53
aws.region	string	Region name for the request	"eu-west-1"

V2 attributes

In addition to the above attributes, the instrumentation also collect the following for V2 ONLY:

Attribute Name	Type	Description	Example
aws.operation	string	The method name for the request.	for SQS.sendMessage(...) the operation is "sendMessage"
aws.signature.version	string	AWS version of authentication signature on the request.	"v4"
aws.service.api	string	The sdk class name for the service	"SQS"
aws.service.identifier	string	Identifier for the service in the sdk	"sqs"
aws.service.name	string	Abbreviation name for the service	"Amazon SQS"
aws.request.id	uuid	Request unique id, as returned from aws on response	"01234567-89ab-cdef-0123-456789abcdef"
aws.error	string	information about a service or networking error, as returned from AWS	"UriParameterError: Expected uri parameter to have length >= 1, but found "" for params.Bucket"

Custom User Attributes

The instrumentation user can configure a preRequestHook function which will be called before each request, with a normalized request object (across v2 and v3) and the corresponding span.
This hook can be used to add custom attributes to the span with any logic.
For example, user can add interesting attributes from the request.params, and write custom logic based on the service and operation. Usage example:

awsInstrumentationConfig = {
  preRequestHook: (span, request) => {
    if (span.serviceName === "s3") {
      span.setAttribute("s3.bucket.name", request.commandInput["Bucket"]);
    }
  },
};

Specific Service Logic

AWS contains dozens of services accessible with the JS SDK. For many services, the default attributes specified above are enough, but other services have specific trace semantic conventions, or need to inject/extract intra-process context, or set intra-process context correctly.

Specific service logic currently implemented for:

• SQS
• SNS
• Lambda
• DynamoDb

Potential Side Effects

The instrumentation is doing best effort to support the trace specification of OpenTelemetry. For SQS, it involves defining new attributes on the Messages array, as well as on the manipulated types generated from this array (to set correct trace context for a single SQS message operation). Those properties are defined as non-enumerable properties, so they have minimum side effect on the app. They will, however, show when using the Object.getOwnPropertyDescriptors and Reflect.ownKeys functions on SQS Messages array and for each Message in the array.

Migration From opentelemetry-instrumentation-aws-sdk

This instrumentation was originally published under the name "opentelemetry-instrumentation-aws-sdk" in this repo. Few breaking changes were made during porting to the contrib repo to align with conventions:

Hook Info

The instrumentation's config preRequestHook, responseHook and sqsProcessHook functions signature changed, so the second function parameter is info object, containing the relevant hook data.

moduleVersionAttributeName config option

The moduleVersionAttributeName config option is removed. To add the aws-sdk package version to spans, use the moduleVersion attribute in hook info for preRequestHook and responseHook functions.

Useful links

• For more information on OpenTelemetry, visit: https://opentelemetry.io/
• For more about OpenTelemetry JavaScript: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry-js
• For help or feedback on this project, join us in GitHub Discussions

License

Apache 2.0 - See LICENSE for more information.