The Past, Present, and Future of OpenTelemetry

In this episode of Grafana’s Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie sit down with Julius Volz, co-creator of Prometheus and founder of PromLabs, and Richi "RichiH" Hartmann, Prometheus maintainer and Senior Developer Programs Director at Grafana Labs, to unpack Prometheus 3.0. They trace Prometheus back to its beginnings at SoundCloud, where Julius and his colleagues were trying to recreate the magic of Google’s Borgmon. The group dives into why Prometheus stuck with a text-based exposition format, what’s new in 3.0 — including performance gains, revamped UI, UTF-8 support, and native histograms — and how it fits alongside OpenTelemetry. Along the way, they explore governance changes, future directions, and why emojis are now valid in metric names.

Recorded live at GrafanaCon Seattle, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie kick off Season 3 of Grafana’s Big Tent by welcoming Ivana Huckova (Staff Software Engineer, Grafana Labs), Andrew McCalip (Head of Research and Development, Varda Space Industries), and Brad Fitzpatrick (Chief Engineer, Tailscale). They swap first-tinkering stories and laugh through IoT wins and fails (dog happiness monitors, candle sensors—oops). Andrew explains how his self-righting, foam-filled autonomous boat survives the open seas, while Brad shares how he uses AI to 3D-print OpenSCAD parts on demand.

In the season two finale, hosts Tom Wilkie and Mat Ryer are joined by Richard "RichiH" Hartmann, Director of Community at Grafana Labs, and Pavel Strobl of Prusa Research to explore the intersection of 3D printing and observability. Prusa Research not only produces 3D printers that both Tom and Richi use to create everything from wind tunnels to miniature Grots, but the company also uses Grafana internally for their own systems, making this a dynamic conversation about how Grafana is being used to monitor and improve physical manufacturing processes as well as IT infrastructure.

Two members of the OpenTelemetry governing board, Daniel Gomez Blanco and Juraci Paixão Kröhling, join Mat and Matt to dive deep into the evolution of OTel from its early days (including the story of how OTel got its name) to its current state and future roadmap. 

Hosted by Tom Wilkie, this week's episode features Thomas Dullien, former Co-Founder and CEO of Optimyze; Bryan Boreham, Grafana Labs' distinguished engineer; and Senior Software Engineer at Grafana Labs and member of the CNCF Environmental Sustainability TAG Niki Manoledaki. Together, they delve into the complex world of cloud resource management and sustainability and explore the intricate challenges of optimizing Kubernetes clusters, from understanding allocation versus utilization to developing strategies that reduce waste and carbon footprint. 

Join hosts Tom Wilkie and Mat Ryer along with Torkel Ödegaard, the creator of Grafana, and Mitch Seaman, Senior Product Director for Grafana, as they dive into the making of Grafana 11 and explore how the observability platform is evolving to meet the needs of both novice and expert users. From how hackathon projects are transformed into major features like Explore Metrics and Logs, to the years-long journey of replacing Angular, they share the technical challenges and achievements behind Grafana's latest major release. The conversation covers improving the getting-started experience, adding enterprise features like cloud migration tools, how Grafana's development process has matured, the upcoming roadmap for datasources, and so much more. 

Hosts Tom Wilkie and Matt Toback sit down with guests Liz Rice from Isovalent and Mario Macías from Grafana Labs to explore how eBPF is revolutionizing observability, networking, and security in modern infrastructure. They cover what eBPF is (hint: it's no longer just about packet filtering!), the performance advantages of eBPF-based instrumentation compared to traditional methods, what's in store for the future of eBPF, and so much more. Liz and Mario also share their firsthand experiences developing widely-adopted eBPF tools like Cilium, Tetragon, and Grafana Beyla, offering practical insights into how these technologies are transforming observability (and making it awesome!).

In this episode of Grafana's Big Tent, hosts Mat Ryer and Tom Wilkie dive into the world of monitoring Kubernetes with guests Vasil Kaftandzhiev from Grafana Labs and Dio Tsoumas who leads the DevOps team at the consumer research company GWI. They explore why traditional monitoring techniques aren't enough for Kubernetes environments and discuss the evolving landscape of observability in cloud-native architectures.

Join host Mat Ryer as he explores the world of Adaptive Metrics with Grafana Labs engineers Patrick Oyarzun and Mauro Stettler, alongside guest Oren Lion from TeleTracking. What started as a hackathon project has evolved into a game-changing feature that helps organizations manage their metrics more efficiently and cost-effectively. They discuss the challenge of metric cardinality explosion in modern cloud-native architectures, the journey from prototype to production, and balancing cost savings with data accessibility and reliability. Whether you're dealing with metric overload or just curious about the latest in observability, this episode will help you understand how organizations are tackling the challenge of metrics management at scale.

In this episode of Grafana's Big Tent, host Matt Toback explores the world of DDoS protection and observability with guests Alex Forster, Engineering Manager at CloudFlare, and Dee Kitchen, VP of Engineering at Grafana Labs. They discuss the challenges of detecting and mitigating DDoS attacks, the importance of automation in maintaining high availability, and the intricate balance between observability and control in modern tech infrastructures. From explaining complex concepts through relatable metaphors to discussing real-world experiences with state-level attacks, this is an episode you won’t want to miss.