Amazon SQS OpenTelemetry instrumentation

Helios' instrumentation of Amazon SQS enables developers to visualize, troubleshoot and test their applicative flows that include Amazon SQS operations.

SQS instrumentation is supported out of the box with the Helios OpenTelemetry SDK.

Below are a few examples of how you can leverage this E2E observability in Helios.

Tracing & visualization

When searching for the SQS component you will see all services and traces that include handling SQS messages. The traces are grouped by APIs (if a message is consumed by the service) and Outgoing operations (if a message is produced by the service).

SQS auto-instrumentation shows up as an E2E distributed trace

An example for SQS auto-instrumentation in Helios

When using trace visualization, it's very easy to see the E2E flow of operations (spans) handled by different SQS message queues.

SQS auto-instrumentation shows up as an E2E distributed trace

An example for an E2E trace visualization in Helios, highlighting the SQS operations (spans) and all relevant info regarding the message

Observability over message queue latency

In addition to tracing E2E applicative flows, Helios provides you with the insight and tools to investigate slow processing times of messages across your distributed application.

SDK-level queue latency calculation

๐Ÿ“˜

Currently supported in the Helios OpenTelemetry SDK for Node.js version 1.0.89 or newer.

Queue latency is calculated at the instrumentation level and thus can be handled as all other span properties are, through the labels, alerts and notifications mechanism in Helios.

Slack notification on long SQS queue latency

An example for a Slack notification on long queue latency for an SQS message queue in Helios, including a direct link to the E2E flow (trace) during which this was encountered

Slack notification on long SQS queue latency

Queue latency is also easily available on the trace visualization, for any span consuming a message from a queue (and specifically, Kafka).

SQS auto-instrumentation shows up as an E2E distributed trace

The E2E trace visualization in Helios, instrumenting also SQS operations and displaying the message queue latency

Also, each API that is essentially the service consuming a message - now includes the queue latency distribution widget as part of the API dashboard. Clicking on each bar takes you to the relevant traces with the corresponding queue latency time.

The queue latency distribution widget appears for each API involving consuming a message from a queue (and specifically, Kafka)

The queue latency distribution widget appears for each API involving consuming a message from a queue (and specifically, SQS)

Server-side queue latency calculation

Coming soon for SQS. Learn more on Kafka.


๐Ÿ–ค

Helios is a a dev-first observability platform that helps dev and ops teams shorten the time to find and fix issues in distributed applications. Built on OpenTelemetry, Helios provides traces and correlates them with logs and metrics, enabling end-to-end app visibility and faster troubleshooting.

Get started for free with Helios to simplify and enrich OpenTelemetry distributed tracing.