splunk-opentelemetry

What it is and what it does

splunk-opentelemetry is a Splunk-curated distribution of OpenTelemetry Python that bundles trace exporters, system metrics instrumentation, and logging instrumentation into a single package. It works by patching supported libraries at runtime to capture distributed traces and export them to Splunk APM or a local Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector. The distribution comes preconfigured with OTLP gRPC and HTTP exporters, unlimited trace limits for full-fidelity collection, and system metrics capture.

You install it, run opentelemetry-bootstrap to add instrumentation for your application's dependencies, then launch your app with the opentelemetry-instrument wrapper and environment variables. By default it sends traces to localhost:4317; you can redirect to Splunk Observability Cloud by setting SPLUNK_REALM and SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN. It also supports OpAMP for fleet management and an optional Cisco SecureApp extension for dependency reporting.

Use it for:

• Instrument a Python web service to send distributed traces to a local or cloud-hosted Splunk APM instance without manual span creation.
• Capture system metrics (CPU, memory, disk) alongside application traces for correlated observability.
• Enable fleet management by connecting agents to Splunk Observability Cloud via OpAMP for centralized configuration and status monitoring.
• Automatically trace calls across multiple Python libraries (Django, Flask, requests, etc.) by running opentelemetry-bootstrap.
• Report Python package dependencies as structured logs for compliance and security scanning via the optional Cisco SecureApp extension.

Worth the install?

AI-flagged interpretation of the facts on this page — verify before relying

Automatically instruments Python applications to capture and report distributed traces to Splunk APM by patching supported libraries at runtime with OpenTelemetry-compatible tracers.

Yes, if you are running Python 3.10+ and need distributed tracing to Splunk APM. The package is actively maintained, has low install friction, carries a permissive license, and requires no security patches. Setup is straightforward for standard deployments; consider it essential infrastructure for observability in Splunk-based environments. Not necessary if you use a different APM vendor or do not need distributed tracing.

Install

splunk-opentelemetry on PyPI

pip install splunk-opentelemetry

uv add splunk-opentelemetry

poetry add splunk-opentelemetry

Installing splunk-opentelemetry

Before you install

Low install friction with a pure-wheel distribution. Active maintenance with a release 10 days old; repository shows recent activity and is not archived.

License in practice

Apache-2.0 permissive license allows commercial and private use with minimal restrictions; suitable for most production environments.

Quickstart

pip install splunk-opentelemetry
opentelemetry-bootstrap -a install
OTEL_SERVICE_NAME=my-python-service opentelemetry-instrument python app.py

Requires Python 3.10 or later; expects a Splunk OpenTelemetry Collector running at http://localhost:4317 by default or SPLUNK_REALM and SPLUNK_ACCESS_TOKEN environment variables for direct cloud ingest.

Verify before relying

• Which specific libraries are supported for automatic instrumentation beyond the general reference to opentelemetry-python-contrib.
• Performance overhead or span volume limits under typical application load.
• Compatibility with async/await patterns and concurrent frameworks.

Package facts

Evidence: splunk_opentelemetry-2.12.1-py3-none-any.whl

Tags

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