Telemetrygen

Generate synthetic OpenTelemetry telemetry with telemetrygen from opentelemetry-collector-contrib.

Quick orientation

telemetrygen has three subcommands -- traces, metrics, logs -- each exporting via OTLP to a collector or backend. The default transport is gRPC on port 4317; add --otlp-http to switch to HTTP on port 4318.

Every command needs at least a subcommand and typically --otlp-insecure for local development (TLS is on by default).

Workflow

1. Pick the signal -- traces, metrics, or logs.
2. Set the endpoint -- defaults to localhost:4317 (gRPC) or localhost:4318 (HTTP). Use --otlp-endpoint to override.
3. Choose count or duration -- use --traces/--metrics/--logs for a fixed count per worker, or --duration for time-based generation. Duration overrides count when both are set.
4. Control throughput -- total rate = --workers x --rate. Without --rate, generation runs at max speed (dangerous against real backends).
5. Add identity and attributes -- --service sets the service name; --otlp-attributes adds resource-level attributes; --telemetry-attributes adds span/metric/log-level attributes.
6. Review the anti-patterns below before running against shared or production infrastructure.