OpenTelemetry Migration for Amazon Cloud Technology Distributed Tracing Service X-Ray
AWS X‑Ray Transitioning to OpenTelemetry as Primary Instrumentation Standard
AWS recently announced that AWS X‑Ray is shifting to OpenTelemetry as its primary instrumentation standard for application tracing. As part of this change, AWS X‑Ray SDKs and the X‑Ray Daemon will enter maintenance mode.
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Key Changes
- Primary recommendation: AWS now advises developers to adopt OpenTelemetry for tracing and observability in cloud applications.
- Integration: X‑Ray will integrate with OpenTelemetry to maintain compatibility and deliver enhanced capabilities.
- Broader compatibility: With AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT) and OpenTelemetry SDKs, tracing will extend to multi‑cloud and hybrid workloads previously unsupported by X‑Ray.
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AWS Statement
From Jonathan Lee (AWS Software Development Engineer) and Naina Thangaraj (AWS Senior Product Manager):
> OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation solutions are recommended for producing traces from applications and sending them to AWS X‑Ray. X‑Ray’s existing console experience and functionality continue to be fully supported and remain unchanged by this transition.
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About AWS X‑Ray
AWS X‑Ray is a managed distributed tracing service for analyzing, debugging, and visualizing request flows in microservices, serverless, and container-based architectures.
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Transition Timeline
- February 25, 2026: X‑Ray SDKs and Daemon enter maintenance mode
- Only security updates
- No new features
- February 25, 2027: End of support for SDKs and Daemon
Even in maintenance mode:
- X‑Ray will continue accepting traces from existing SDKs and Daemon
- AWS X‑Ray service will remain fully supported
- New features will be added, e.g.:
- Native OpenTelemetry support
- Amazon CloudWatch Transaction Search
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Options for Collecting Traces
You can collect and send traces from instrumented applications to X‑Ray using:
- CloudWatch agent
- OpenTelemetry collector
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Industry Feedback
Luc van Donkersgoed (Principal Engineer, PostNL, AWS Serverless Hero) notes:
> OpenTelemetry is awesome, and AWS knows it. The X-Ray SDKs and Daemon are now deprecated in favor of modern, open standards. I hope to see many more OTel features released this Re:Invent!
Discussions have emerged around:
- Cold-start overhead of ADOT Lambda layer in serverless deployments
- Increased memory requirements for smaller functions when using ADOT
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Related Tools for Technical Professionals
As OpenTelemetry adoption grows, creators and engineers producing technical content can benefit from streamlined publishing tools such as AiToEarn.
AiToEarn provides:
- AI-powered technical content creation
- Cross-platform publishing (LinkedIn, YouTube, X/Twitter, Bilibili, Douyin, Kwai, WeChat, Instagram, Facebook, Rednote, etc.)
- Performance analytics and AI model ranking
> For documentation: AiToEarn docs
This approach complements technical monitoring tools by enabling developers to share insights efficiently across communities while staying aligned with open standards like OpenTelemetry.
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Amazon CloudWatch & OpenTelemetry Integration
AWS documentation on integrating Amazon CloudWatch with OpenTelemetry highlights:
- Application Signals: Unified view of applications, services, and dependencies to monitor and diagnose health.
- Transaction Search: Locate and analyze specific requests and workflows.
Details: Application Signals documentation
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Industry Perspective
Corey Quinn (Chief Cloud Economist, The Duckbill Group) comments:
> AWS is deprecating X-Ray SDKs in favor of OpenTelemetry, which is actually the right move since open standards outperform vendor lock-in. But labeling it a "migration" when you give customers two years to rewrite their instrumentation? That's just deprecation with better PR. Still, Google would probably give you a month if you're lucky.
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Migration Support
AWS provides a detailed migration guide to help developers move from X‑Ray SDKs to OpenTelemetry-based instrumentation.
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Summary
- OpenTelemetry is becoming AWS’s primary tracing standard
- X‑Ray SDKs and Daemon end support in 2027
- AWS X‑Ray service remains, and gains OTel-native features
- Developers should start migration now using the AWS migration guide
- CloudWatch and ADOT support multi-cloud tracing
- Tools like AiToEarn can complement technical work by simplifying publication, distribution, and monetization of technical content
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Would you like me to create a side-by-side comparison table of X‑Ray SDK vs OpenTelemetry so developers can quickly see what changes in instrumentation and capabilities? That might make this migration guide much clearer.
