APM with OpenTelemetry

Logcore APM is built entirely on OpenTelemetry (OTel). You add the standard OpenTelemetry SDK or auto-instrumentation agent to your application, and it exports traces, metrics and logs to Logcore over OTLP. There is no Logcore-specific tracing library to install.

 your app + OpenTelemetry ──OTLP──▶ Logcore
                                     ├─ spans   → APM → Services, Traces (flame graph)
                                     ├─ metrics → APM → OTel metrics
                                     └─ logs    → Logs (linked to their trace)

Choose how to send data

	Through the Logcore agent (recommended on servers)	Directly to Logcore
Setup on the host	Enable apm: in logcore.yaml	nothing
App endpoint	http://localhost:4318 (HTTP) or http://localhost:4317 (gRPC)	https://logcore.lsofito.com or https://logcore.lsofito.com:4317
API key in the app	not needed: the agent adds its own	required in the x-logcore-api-key header
Added automatically	host.name, and deployment.environment from the agent's env: tag
Best for	VMs and bare-metal servers running the agent	containers, Kubernetes, serverless, laptops
Guide	Send through the agent	Send directly

Both routes end up in the same place, and you can mix them.

Three steps

1. Pick a route from the table above and set it up.
2. Instrument your app with OpenTelemetry. Most languages offer zero-code auto-instrumentation. See Language setup.
3. Set three environment variables in your app: the service name, the endpoint, and (direct mode only) the key.

OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=checkout
OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment=production
OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT=http://localhost:4318     # agent mode

Within a minute your service appears under APM → Services.

Instrument app page

The dashboard page Instrument app shows your endpoints, lets you pick an API key, and generates these settings for each language.

What Logcore uses from OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry field	Used for
service.name	Service name in APM, and the service of OTel logs
deployment.environment	The env facet on traces, and the env: tag on logs
host.name	Links data to an infrastructure host
span kind server / consumer	Counted as requests (along with root spans of background jobs)
span status ERROR, or HTTP 5xx on server spans	Counted as errors
span name	The operation (for example GET /orders/:id)
http.response.status_code (or http.status_code)	The HTTP status facet and 5xx error detection
trace_id on log records	The View trace link in Logs

Data retention

Spans and OTel metrics are kept for 7 days by default. OTel logs follow the normal log retention. Your Logcore administrator can change both.