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OpenTelemetry Tracing, not just for webapps#

CfgMgmtCamp Ghent 2026 digest Program Adjacent pick 2–4 February 2026

Abstract

Pieter Lexis, Senior Developer at PowerDNS

  • Why: Contributor-led internals talk from a PowerDNS developer: how they added OpenTelemetry tracing to a DNS server without the OTel C++ SDK, and how trace context is propagated to downstream resolvers via DNS. If you care about DNS operations or about making non-HTTP infrastructure observable, this is a rare detailed treatment.
  • What: The story of adding basic tracing support to PowerDNS, passing trace information to downstream servers via DNS, and visualizing the result in Jaeger — with explicit discussion of the protocol and code workarounds required (from abstract only).
  • How: Custom (SDK-free) OTel instrumentation inside PowerDNS, trace-context propagation through DNS itself, and the "code and protocol hijinks" that skipping the official C++ SDK entailed.
  • Where applicable: DNS-heavy environments generally; the implementation is PowerDNS-specific but the pattern — propagating trace context through a request-routing protocol rather than HTTP headers — is a transferable idea for any layered network service. This is one of the few talks here with genuine engineering detail promised.