Implementing OpenTelemetry with Nginx - Instrument and visualize traces

OpenTelemetry is an open-source standard for instrumenting cloud-native applications for generating different types of telemetry data. A robust observability framework set up using OpenTelemetry can help tremendously while troubleshooting software in production. Nginx is one of the most widely adopted web servers. Most often, nginx is used as a reverse proxy. It serves the frontend or backend applications behind the reverse proxy. In this tutorial, we will learn how to instrument nginx web servers with OpenTelemetry for traces. We will illustrate how to use the OpenTelemetry module, build an nginx container image, deploy it to Kubernetes, and view the traces using SigNoz. What is OpenTelemetry and Why Use it with Nginx? OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework that provides a standardized way to collect and export telemetry data. It combines distributed tracing, metrics collection, and logging into a single, cohesive system. Nginx, a high-performance web server and rever