Metrics, logs and traces tell you the box is hot. They cannot tell you which function is burning the CPU. OpenTelemetry Profiles, the fourth signal, finally can.

In this Tech Tuesday, Allan Mann explains continuous profiling: what an OpenTelemetry profile actually is, continuous versus on-demand, the eBPF collector that runs as an OTel Collector receiver, and how profile samples correlate to trace_id and span_id so a flame graph lines up against the exact trace. Plus the honest caveats: it is alpha, the tooling is catching up, and always-on data carries a real storage and cardinality cost.

Watch on YouTube: https://youtu.be/q4Byz7OLgVY

Read the companion explainer: https://www.masteringobservability.com/p/what-is-opentelemetry-profiling

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