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OpenTelemetry support

OpenTelemetry enhances monitoring and observability in your Boomi API Gateway. It provides a standardized way to capture telemetry data so you can gain deeper insights into the performance and behavior of your APIs. The Gateway generates this data in a consistent format, which you can easily integrate with a wide range of third-party observability platforms for analysis and visualization.

Boomi API Gateway supports the following telemetry data:

  • Traces: Provide end-to-end visibility into the lifecycle of API requests by mapping the flow of each call through the Gateway. Each span corresponds to a unit of work (policy execution, request forwarding, and so on).

  • Logs: Export API Gateway service logs from all nodes to the OTel endpoint for easier troubleshooting.

  • Metrics: Report performance indicators such as CPU utilization, memory usage, JVM statistics, and so on.

The API Gateway supports independent endpoint routing to provide greater flexibility for organizations using specialized tools for different telemetry types. You can override individual endpoints to simultaneously deliver traces, metrics, and logs to different observability platforms, such as routing traces to Jaeger, metrics to Prometheus, and logs to Splunk.

Configuring OpenTelemetry in API gateway

You can configure OpenTelemetry from the Platform UI.

Gateways page

Follow these steps to configure OpenTelemetry in API Gateway:

  1. In API Management, open the Gateway Information settings for your gateway.

  2. Select OpenTelemetrySettings.

  3. Enable your OpenTelemetry settings for APIs. By default, the status remains disabled.

  4. Configure the following:

    a. Exporter Endpoint URL - OTel endpoint where telemetry data is exported.

    Examples:

    https://otlp.nr-data.net:4318

    grpc://otlp.nr-data.net:4317

    b. Compression - The compression algorithm for data transmission:

    • Gzip – Compresses data before sending it to the configured OTel collector URL, reducing the size of transmitted data.
    • None – Sends the data directly without applying any compression.

    c. SSL - Enable this if the OTel endpoint uses a secure URL (HTTPS).

    d. Add header - This option allows you to add headers to the OTel endpoint requests when sending data to external observability tools. If the observability endpoint requires authentication, you can add the appropriate header.

    For instance, to authenticate with an OTel endpoint that requires an API key, you will need to include this header: api-key: xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

    When adding custom headers to your OpenTelemetry configuration, use the encryption toggle to secure sensitive values. Each key-value pair in the custom header section includes an encrypt option. The Encrypt button remains disabled if either the header key or the value is missing to ensure valid configurations.

    For security reasons, if you check the encryption checkbox and save the configuration, you cannot uncheck it for that specific header. To change the value or remove encryption, you must use the "Clear/Reset" action or delete the row.

    e. The Multi-Endpoint configuration defines multiple telemetry destinations, enabling the simultaneous routing of specific signal types—Traces, Metrics, or Logs-to different providers. Through this interface, you can configure each telemetry type to reach its specialized observability platform. The Global Setting serves as the default when you do not select individual overrides.

    • Enable Traces: Captures end-to-end visibility of API request lifecycles, mapping the flow of an API call through the Gateway. Each span corresponds to a unit of work such as policy execution or request forwarding. The Override Log Setting option allows you to define a unique exporter URL, compression, and SSL settings specifically for trace data. This allows you to route traces to a specialized platform like Jaeger or Tempo independently of other telemetry types.

    • Enable Metrics: Reports performance indicators like CPU and memory usage. The Override Log Setting option allows you to route these performance indicators to a different specialized provider, such as Prometheus or CloudWatch, simultaneously with other signals.

    • Enable Log: Exports API Gateway service logs from all nodes to the OTel endpoint for centralized troubleshooting. The Override Log Setting option allows you to deliver logs to a third-party destination, such as Splunk or ELK. This provides full flexibility without restricting you to a single destination for all data.

  5. Save the configuration to apply the settings to your Gateway. Any changes to these multi-endpoint configurations trigger a final confirmation, that you must restart the Gateway to apply the new telemetry logic. After the restart, the Gateway starts exporting traces, metrics, and logs to the configured endpoints.

NewRelic Observability examples

Visualization of the exported telemetry data depends on the endpoint's capabilities. The following screenshots depict the visualization in the NewRelic tool.

Traces

API trace provides a complete view of an API call's journey through the Gateway. It captures the entire flow, including all policy executions, from the request's entry to the final response.

Gateways page

Logs

Logs represent the API Gateway logs exported to the OpenTelemetry tool.

Gateways page

Metrics

Report performance indicators such as CPU utilization, memory usage, GC time per minute and so on.

Gateways page

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