The Special Interest Group (SIG) for OpenTelemetry on Mainframe is in its early stages, focusing on integrating mainframe systems with OpenTelemetry for enhanced observability and compatibility. In this episode, Rüdiger Schulze, Senior Technical Staff Member, Observability and OpenTelemetry for IBM Z and LinuxONE at IBM, discusses the role of OpenTelemetry in improving observability for mainframes and the key focuses of the SIG. On discussing organizations running distributed applications, Schulze says, “What they would like to have is visibility and improved visibility into the mainframe and this is where OpenTelemetry comes in.”

Observability on the Mainframe and how OpenTelemetry is helping

• Mainframes have long had robust monitoring capabilities. Recently, observability products have integrated metrics, trace, and log support to recognize situations, create incidents, and enable automated or expert responses.
• Schulze defines OpenTelemetry as a vendor-agnostic, open-source observability framework aimed at providing high-quality telemetry data for processing and incident response. He talks about the three main components of it.
• While open-source solutions have been on mainframes for over 20 years, achieving end-to-end observability in hybrid cloud environments remains challenging. OpenTelemetry aims to improve observability across distributed applications spanning public cloud, private cloud, and mainframe backends.
• Schulze explains that collaboration with the OpenTelemetry community is in its early stages, with progress like support for the OpenTelemetry collector on Linux for mainframes and SIG for mainframe support.

Role of the Mainframe SIG and its key focuses

• Schulze emphasizes that observability improves visibility for distributed applications spanning public cloud, private cloud, and mainframe environments. He discusses how OpenTelemetry supports this.
• Schulze explains the rationale behind creating the SIG OpenTelemetry on Mainframe, talking about its focus on coordinating and expanding support for integrating mainframe telemetry data into off-platform observability systems.
• Schulze notes strong support from the OpenTelemetry Technical Committee (TC) and Governance Committee (GC), along with backing from the Open Mainframe Project (OMP), in setting up the SIG.
• The SIG is actively seeking more contributors to focus on defining conventions and porting OpenTelemetry components to the platform.
• SIG’s primary goal is aligning OpenTelemetry semantic conventions with mainframe naming practices and extending them as needed. Long-term plans include developing SDKs for COBOL and PL/I on mainframes to export telemetry data in open telemetry formats.
• Schulze acknowledges the OMP’s pivotal role in launching the SIG and securing mainframe community support, discussing its aim to foster collaboration and knowledge sharing across communities.
• Schulze invites mainframe vendors, observability experts, and users to join the SIG, aiming to integrate mainframe systems into OpenTelemetry’s standards, benefiting both contributors and the broader observability community.

Guest: Rüdiger Schulze (LinkedIn)
Organization: IBM (Twitter)
Show: Mainframe Matters

This summary was written by Emily Nicholls.