OpenTelemetry traces in New Relic

OpenTelemetry provides a rich tracing ecosystem, with an API for recording trace telemetry, an SDK for exporting span data, and context propagation for tracing across application boundaries.

This page describes how New Relic handles OpenTelemetry spans it receives via the New Relic OTLP endpoint. To send OpenTelemetry traces to New Relic, you'll need to configure your trace source to export data to the New Relic OpenTelemetry Collector via the OTLP endpoint. See the following pages:

For endpoint configuration requirements, see New Relic OTLP endpoint.
For instructions to configure services with OpenTelemetry, see OpenTelemetry APM monitoring.

OTLP span mapping

New Relic maps OTLP spans to the Span data type. The table below describes how fields from the trace proto message definitions are interpreted:

OTLP proto field	New Relic `Span` field
`ResourceSpans.Resource.attributes`	Each key/value is an attribute on the `Span` [1]
`ScopeSpans.InstrumentationScope.name`	`otel.library.name`
`ScopeSpans.InstrumentationScope.version`	`otel.library.version`
`ScopeSpans.InstrumentationScope.attributes`	Each key/value is an attribute on the `Span` [1]
`Span.trace_id`	`trace.id`
`Span.span_id`	`id`
`Span.trace_state`	`w3c.tracestate`
`Span.parent_span_id`	`parent.id`
`Span.name`	`name`
`Span.kind`	`span.kind`
`Span.start_time_unix_nano`	`timestamp`
`Span.end_time_unix_nano`	`duration.ms` (computed with `Span.start_time_unix_nano`)
`Span.attributes`	Each key/value is an attribute on the `Span` [1]
`Span.dropped_attribute_count`	`otel.dropped_attributes_count`
`Span.events`	Each event is recorded as a `SpanEvent` with `span.id` / `trace.id` referring to source span, count stored as `nr.spanEventCount`
`Span.events[*].time_unix_nano`	Stored as `timestamp` on `SpanEvent`
`Span.events[*].name`	Stored as `name` on `SpanEvent`
`Span.events[*].attributes`	Each key/value is stored as an attribute on `SpanEvent`
`Span.events[*].dropped_attributes_count`	Stored as `ote.dropped_Attributes_count` on `SpanEvent`
`Span.dropped_events_count`	`otel.dropped_events_count`
`Span.status.message`	`otel.status_description`
`Span.status.code`	`otel.status_code`

Table footnotes

[1] In case of conflict in resource attributes, scope attributes, span attributes, and top level span fields, the order of precedent (highest to lowest) is the top level Span.* fields > Span.attributes > ScopeSpans.InstrumentationScope.attributes > ResourceSpans.Resource.attributes.

See OTLP attribute types for details on New Relic OTLP endpoint supported attribute types and OTLP attribute limits for details on validation performed on attributes.

Span links support

OpenTelemetry span links are not currently supported by New Relic.

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Table footnotes

Span links support

OTLP span mapping