A Guide On Implementing NextJS Opentelemetry

Are you struggling to optimize your Vercel logging with NextJS Opentelemetry? You're in the right place! Alerty's NextJS logging solution can help you achieve your goals. Let's see how!

Table of Contents

• What Is NextJS OpenTelemetry?
• 5 Benefits Of Using OpenTelemetry With NextJS
• Setting Up Opentelemetry In Next.js
• Collecting And Exporting Telemetry Data
• Using The OpenTelemetry Collector
• Analyzing Tracing Data
• Monitoring Performance And Resource Consumption
• Best Practices For Using NextJS OpenTelemetry
• Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's NextJS Logging Tool

What Is NextJS OpenTelemetry?

Next.js is a versatile framework that simplifies the development of React applications by providing out-of-the-box features for building performant and scalable web applications. OpenTelemetry, an open-source framework, complements Next.js by enhancing the observability of applications through:

• Capturing
• Collecting
• Analyzing telemetry data

Integrating OpenTelemetry with Next.js provides a robust observability platform for developers to monitor and analyze their applications in real time.

Developer Capabilities

Integrating Next.js with OpenTelemetry amplifies developers' capabilities to monitor, troubleshoot, and optimize their applications.

Holistic Application Insights

OpenTelemetry is a powerful tool that enables developers to monitor application performance across various dimensions comprehensively. It allows developers to capture efficiently:

• Metrics
• Logs
• Traces

With Next.js OpenTelemetry, developers can navigate the complexities of application monitoring and observability, ensuring they have the necessary insights to make informed decisions and optimize their applications effectively.

Real-Time Observability and Performance Optimization

The integration of OpenTelemetry with Next.js ensures that developers can quickly identify, trace, and troubleshoot performance issues. By leveraging OpenTelemetry's tracing capabilities, developers can:

• Pinpoint application bottlenecks
• Understand root causes
• Optimize performance

This real-time observability is vital for maintaining high-performance standards in modern web applications built with Next.js.

5 Benefits Of Using OpenTelemetry With NextJS

1. Enhanced Performance Monitoring

OpenTelemetry provides detailed end-to-end tracing of requests in Next.js applications, allowing developers to monitor performance in real time. It automatically instruments Next.js features like:

• getStaticProps
• getServerSideProps

2. Reduced Overhead

OpenTelemetry eliminates the need to create and manage critical application function manually spans. Thus, developers can focus on building features rather than implementing custom instrumentation.

3. Vendor-Neutral Observability

OpenTelemetry allows collecting telemetry data in a standard format that can be exported to various observability backends, such as:

• Jaeger
• Prometheus
• Zipkin, etc. 

This provides the flexibility to switch observability tools without changing the application code.

4. Deeper Insights

The structured trace data from OpenTelemetry enables informed optimization decisions for Next.js applications. Developers can pinpoint performance bottlenecks and understand user interactions to enhance the overall user experience.

5. Simplified Integration

Next.js has built-in support for OpenTelemetry, requiring minimal configuration to enable. Developers can quickly set up tracing by installing a few packages and enabling the experimental instrumentation hook in next.config.js.

Comprehensive Monitoring Made Easy

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering:

• Application performance monitoring
• Database monitoring
• Incident management

It supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and fix issues. 

• Alerty monitors databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
• Tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption
• It features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize user experience
• Its universal service monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty uses AI to simplify setup, providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. It is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup, and integrates with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams needing efficient, affordable monitoring. 

Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's NextJS logging tool today!

Related Reading

• NextJS Error Boundary
• Vercel Analytics
• NextJS Opentelemetry
• NextJS Error Handling
• NextJS Error

Setting Up Opentelemetry In Next.js

To get started with adding OpenTelemetry observability to your Next.js project, you must first install the necessary OpenTelemetry packages. These packages include:

• @opentelemetry/api
• @opentelemetry/sdk-node
• @opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node

Once these packages are installed, you can start configuring your OpenTelemetry SDK and the auto-instrumentations.

Setting Up otel-config.js

You should create a file called otel-config.js in your project root directory. This file will be responsible for configuring the OpenTelemetry SDK and the auto-instrumentations. With the SDK initialized in the otel-config.js file, the auto-instrumentations will ensure that your Next.js application can be monitored effectively for performance issues.

Enabling Experimental Instrumentation Hook in next.config.js

To integrate OpenTelemetry with your Next.js application, modify the next.config.js file to include the experimental instrumentation hook. This will ensure that the SDK is initialized when your application starts, providing you with the visibility and insights necessary to monitor and debug your application effectively. 

Enabling the experimental instrumentation hook in your Next.js application can enhance your observability and provide valuable insights that can improve your application's performance.

Observability and Performance Optimization

By following these steps and integrating OpenTelemetry into your Next.js application, you can effectively track your application's behavior and performance, both in development and production environments. This enhanced observability ensures that you can monitor and debug your application effectively, allowing you to optimize its performance and deliver a better user experience.

Testing Your Instrumentation

You must test the instrumentation to verify that your Next.js application is correctly instrumented with OpenTelemetry. This ensures that the telemetry data collection accurately captures the desired telemetry signals and helps identify any potential issues or gaps in the instrumentation process.

Initial Setup Verification

To begin, confirm that OpenTelemetry is enabled in your Next.js application by setting experimental.instrumentationHook = true in your next.config.js file. This step ensures that your code, such as getStaticProps, is wrapped in spans with automatic helpful attributes.

Configuring OpenTelemetry

For a basic setup:

• Leverage the @vercel/otel package
• Install this package using npm install @vercel/otel
• Create an instrumentation.js or instrumentation.ts file in your project's root directory.
• Register your Next.js application with OpenTelemetry within this file by calling the registerOTel function.

Advanced Configuration Testing

If the @vercel/otel package doesn't meet your specific requirements, you can opt for the manual configuration of OpenTelemetry. This process involves installing multiple OpenTelemetry packages and initializing the NodeSDK to enable OpenTelemetry in your application. Ensure that this setup is exclusively imported when running in a Node.js environment to prevent compatibility issues with the edge runtime.

Observing Your Application

Once OpenTelemetry is configured, you can initiate the observation of your application. Utilize the OpenTelemetry collector to collect and process telemetry data or set up custom exporters to transmit data to your preferred observability platform.

Collecting And Exporting Telemetry Data

In NextJS, you can collect and export telemetry data using OpenTelemetry exporters. These exporters enable you to send collected telemetry data to external systems for analysis. For example, you can utilize the ConsoleSpanExporter from @opentelemetry/tracing to add a span processor to the provider. By doing so, you can export the telemetry data for further analysis.

Exporting Telemetry Data to Observability Tools

NextJS supports various exporters for exporting telemetry data to observability tools. For instance, you can utilize the opentelemetry-exporter-trace-otlp-http package to send trace data to different observability platforms. 

By configuring the CollectorTraceExporter from @opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http, you can specify the URL to which the telemetry data should be sent. This allows you to export the collected telemetry data to your observability tools efficiently and effectively.

Using The OpenTelemetry Collector

The OpenTelemetry Collector is a versatile component that collects telemetry data from different services and exports it to various backends. Setting up the OpenTelemetry Collector involves configuring it to receive and process telemetry data. The hotel-collector-config.yaml file provides the necessary configuration for the collector to start receiving telemetry data. 

Defining receivers, exporters, and service pipelines allows you to customize the OpenTelemetry collector's behavior to suit your specific needs. The configuration file specifies how the collector should receive data using the OTLP protocol and export it to a logging backend. This setup allows you to monitor your services effectively and gain insights into their performance.

Collecting Data from Different Services

The OpenTelemetry Collector can aggregate telemetry data from various sources, providing a unified view of your system's performance. This is particularly useful for monitoring complex, multi-service architectures. By configuring the collector to receive data from different services using the OTLP protocol, you can consolidate telemetry data and export it to a centralized logging backend. 

This enables you to analyze performance metrics across services and identify bottlenecks or issues impacting your system's performance. The OpenTelemetry Collector is a central point for collecting telemetry data, simplifying monitoring and troubleshooting in distributed environments.

Cost-Effective Monitoring Made Simple

Alerty is a cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups, offering:

• Application performance monitoring
• Database monitoring
• Incident management

It supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, helping developers identify and fix issues. 

• Alerty monitors databases such as Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS
• Tracking key metrics like CPU usage and memory consumption
• It features quick incident management and Real User Monitoring (RUM) to optimize user experience
• Its universal service monitoring covers dependencies like Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel. 

Alerty uses AI to simplify setup, providing a cost-effective solution compared to competitors. It is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup, and integrates with tools like Sentry, making it ideal for developers and small teams needing efficient, affordable monitoring. 

Catch issues before they affect your users with Alerty's NextJS logging tool today!

Related Reading

• Javascript Error Logging
• NextJS Debugger
• NextJS CSRF
• Next JS Best Practices
• NextJS Security
• Javascript Monitoring
• Next JS Speed Optimization

Analyzing Tracing Data

Trace data provides valuable insights into the execution of operations within your application. This data flow consists of multiple spans, each representing individual work units. These spans help you visualize the path of operations within your codebase and understand how your application behaves under various scenarios.

Trace data provides detailed information about the execution of operations within your application. Each trace consists of multiple spans, which represent individual units of work.

// pages/api/trace-example.js

import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';

export default function handler(req, res) {

  const tracer = trace.getTracer('example-tracer');

  const rootSpan = tracer.startSpan('root-span');

  const childSpan = tracer.startSpan('child-span', { parent: rootSpan });

  childSpan.end();

  rootSpan.end();

  res.status(200).json({ message: 'Trace data collected' });

}

For instance, the trace-example.js file uses the `@opentelemetry/api` in the code snippet provided to generate trace data. The first unit of work created is a root span named root-span, followed by a child span named child-span with the root span as its parent. The child span then ends, and finally, the root span concludes, indicating the operation's completion.

Identifying patterns and insights

Analyzing trace data is crucial for identifying patterns and gaining insights into your application's behavior. It is a necessary stepping stone towards optimizing performance and troubleshooting issues within the codebase. By leveraging the trace data provided by NextJS's OpenTelemetry, developers can identify bottlenecks, performance degradation, and even potential bugs in their applications.

The Otel repository provided by Vercel is a valuable resource for understanding tracing data within NextJS. By analyzing traces, you can uncover various patterns and anomalies in the execution of your application. This detailed insight enables you to make informed decisions on optimizing aspects of your application's performance and resolve any underlying issues effectively.

Monitoring Performance And Resource Consumption

Tracking Response Times

Monitoring response times is crucial for ensuring a smooth user experience. OpenTelemetry allows you to track response times and other performance metrics efficiently.

// pages/api/response-time.js
import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';

export default function handler(req, res) {
  const span = trace.getTracer('default').startSpan('response-time-span');
  const startTime = Date.now();

  // Simulate some processing
  setTimeout(() => {
    const endTime = Date.now();
    span.setAttribute('response-time', endTime - startTime);
    span.end();
    res.status(200).json({ responseTime: endTime - startTime });
  }, 100);
}

Monitoring Resource Consumption and Error Rates

Resource consumption and error rates are critical metrics for maintaining an application's health. OpenTelemetry provides the tools to monitor these metrics effectively, allowing you to optimize resource usage and minimize errors.

// pages/api/resource-consumption.js
import { trace } from '@opentelemetry/api';

export default function handler(req, res) {
  const span = trace.getTracer('default').startSpan('resource-consumption-span');
  span.setAttribute('cpu-usage', process.cpuUsage());
  span.setAttribute('memory-usage', process.memoryUsage());

  span.end();
  res.status(200).json({ message: 'Resource consumption data collected' });
}

Best Practices For Using NextJS OpenTelemetry

Optimize Telemetry Data Collection

Efficient telemetry data collection involves balancing the amount of data collected with the overhead introduced. Use sampling techniques and limit the granularity of spans to optimize performance.

Manage Resource Consumption

Monitor your telemetry setup's resource consumption regularly to ensure it does not negatively impact your application's performance. Use tools and techniques to minimize overhead while maintaining visibility.

Add Custom Instrumentation

Instrument additional custom logic or API calls by creating spans using the OpenTelemetry API. Provide helpful attributes to the spans for better insights.

Keep Configuration Separate

To avoid issues in the browser, maintain the OpenTelemetry configuration in a separate file and only import it in a Node.js environment.

Troubleshooting and Debugging

Enable detailed logging for your OpenTelemetry setup to facilitate debugging. Use the logs to trace issues back to their source and adjust your configuration. Integrating services like Alerty can complement OpenTelemetry for client-side errors by providing detailed error reporting and analytics.

Related Reading

• Datadog NextJS
• Posthog NextJS
• NextJS Prometheus
• Newrelic NextJS
• Front End Monitoring Tools

Catch Issues Before They Affect Your Users with Alerty's NextJS Logging Tool

Alerty is a robust cloud monitoring service for developers and early-stage startups. It offers features that help identify and resolve application performance issues, database monitoring, and incident management. The tool supports technologies like NextJS, React, Vue, and Node.js, making it versatile and adaptable to various development environments. 

Key Features of Alerty

Performance Monitoring

Alerty monitors key metrics such as CPU usage, memory consumption, and more for databases like Supabase, PostgreSQL, and RDS, helping you monitor the health of your applications.

Incident Management

With quick incident management capabilities, Alerty ensures developers can swiftly respond to issues, minimizing downtime and user impact.

Real User Monitoring (RUM)

By providing insights into user behavior and experience, developers can optimize their applications for better performance and user satisfaction.

Universal Service Monitoring

Alerty keeps an eye on dependencies like the Stripe API, OpenAI, and Vercel, helping developers ensure the smooth functioning of their applications.

AI-Driven Monitoring with Alerty

Alerty leverages AI to simplify setup and provide a cost-effective solution compared to other competitors in the market. The tool is designed for ease of use, allowing quick setup and integration with other popular tools like Sentry. This makes it an ideal choice for developers and small teams who need efficient and affordable monitoring solutions.

Why Choose Alerty for NextJS Logging?

Alerty's NextJS logging tool is a powerful ally for developers working with NextJS applications. Alerty helps developers catch issues before they impact users by tracking and monitoring key performance metrics. 

By integrating with other tools and offering quick incident management, Alerty ensures that your NextJS applications run smoothly and efficiently. Dive into Alerty's monitoring solutions today and ensure your applications perform at their best.