Managing attribute limits in OpenTelemetry and Observe APM

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By default, OpenTelemetry enforces certain limits on attributes - Common specification concepts | OpenTelemetry

  • AttributeCountLimit (Default=128) - Maximum allowed attribute count per record;

  • AttributeValueLengthLimit (Default=Infinity) - Maximum allowed attribute value length;

Under some cases, you may find certain attributes are missing in Observe, due to a breach of AttributeCountLimit, or the attribute having a very large value that exceeds Observe’s ingest size limit mentioned in OpenTelemetry - Observability Cloud documentation .

  • If you wish to export more than 128 attributes, set the environment variable OTEL_ATTRIBUTE_COUNT_LIMIT=<YOUR_NEW_LIMIT> on your application
  • If attribute values are too large:
    • You may truncate such attributes at the time of setting them.
    • You may also set the environment variable (value denotes number of characters) OTEL_ATTRIBUTE_VALUE_LENGTH_LIMIT=<YOUR_NEW_LIMIT> to automatically truncate any attribute that exceeds the set limit.