How to Implement OpenTelemetry Distributed Tracing in Python FastAPI Services

As Python backend services scale into microservices and async workers, traditional logging fails to track request flows across distributed systems. OpenTelemetry (OTel), a vendor-agnostic CNCF standard, addresses this by enabling structured distributed tracing, metrics, and log correlation. A practical guide demonstrates how to configure a TracerProvider, set up a BatchSpanProcessor, and export telemetry data to backends like Jaeger or Grafana Tempo using FastAPI. The setup involves installing key OTel packages and building an initialization module that attaches resource metadata to every trace. Custom spans can then be defined to pinpoint silent performance bottlenecks such as slow database queries or external API call delays.
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