Beyond Monitoring: Observability in .NET with OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry provides vendor-neutral observability for .NET applications through standardized collection of traces, metrics, logs, and profiling data. The framework offers three instrumentation approaches: manual for full control, library-based for common scenarios, and zero-code for quick deployment at scale. The OpenTelemetry Collector acts as a central pipeline to receive, process, and route telemetry data to any backend, enabling data portability and flexibility. While monitoring tracks known issues through thresholds and alerts, observability helps understand complex system behaviors and diagnose unexpected problems across distributed microservices architectures.