APM in groundcover: how OpenTelemetry became a first-class producer of APM measurements

Groundcover has successfully transformed OpenTelemetry (OTel) from merely a trace source into a comprehensive Application Performance Monitoring (APM) producer, allowing for accurate service metrics, dashboards, and alerts without the need for eBPF. This advancement enables users to access APM data directly from their OTel spans, providing a complete observability solution that integrates seamlessly with existing infrastructures. The company has addressed the challenge of having two data producers—eBPF and OTel—by tagging the data source, ensuring accurate aggregation and preventing double-counting in metrics. Groundcover's approach includes a query system that requires specifying resource type and traffic direction, enhancing the precision and reliability of APM queries. This development allows users to build detailed dashboards and alerts based on real service telemetry, making APM a crucial data source within groundcover's observability ecosystem.