GitHub CI/CD Observability with OpenTelemetry

Author: Deep Mistry | June 2025

Table of Contents

• Introduction
• Why Observability in CI/CD?
• What is OpenTelemetry?
• Setting Up OpenTelemetry in GitHub Actions
• Sample GitHub Workflow with Telemetry
• Benefits of CI/CD Observability
• Conclusion

Introduction

CI/CD pipelines are the backbone of modern DevOps workflows. However, they often lack robust observability features. In this blog, we’ll explore how to enhance your GitHub Actions workflows with observability using OpenTelemetry – a powerful open-source telemetry framework.

Why Observability in CI/CD?

Observability isn't just for apps in production. Your CI/CD pipeline can:

• Expose bottlenecks during builds
• Help debug flaky tests
• Detect failures early
• Provide insight into workflow duration and parallel steps

What is OpenTelemetry?

OpenTelemetry is a unified framework for collecting traces, metrics, and logs from your applications. It supports multiple languages and can be integrated with various backends like Prometheus, Grafana, Jaeger, or New Relic.

Setting Up OpenTelemetry in GitHub Actions

GitHub Actions allow custom scripts and Docker-based containers. You can instrument steps in the workflow using OpenTelemetry's CLI or SDKs. You’ll need:

• Access to an OpenTelemetry Collector endpoint
• Set environment variables like OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT
• Use an OpenTelemetry-compatible logger or CLI in your job steps

Sample GitHub Workflow with Telemetry

Here’s a sample GitHub Actions workflow using a telemetry wrapper script:

name: CI Build with Observability

on: [push]

jobs:
  build:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    env:
      OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT: "https://otel-collector.yourdomain.com:4317"
      OTEL_SERVICE_NAME: "ci-build"

    steps:
      - name: Checkout code
        uses: actions/checkout@v3

      - name: Set up Node.js
        uses: actions/setup-node@v4
        with:
          node-version: 18

      - name: Install Dependencies
        run: |
          npm install

      - name: Run Tests with Tracing
        run: |
          npx otel-cli exec -- npm test

This setup sends trace data to your OpenTelemetry collector.

Benefits of CI/CD Observability

• See how long each job/step takes
• Detect slow builds or retries early
• Log test failures with trace context
• Monitor changes in build patterns across branches or PRs

Conclusion

Integrating OpenTelemetry into your GitHub Actions workflows can drastically improve your CI/CD insights. As you scale teams or microservices, having observability at the pipeline level becomes essential for debugging and optimization.

Try it in your next project and move one step closer to full-stack observability!

Have questions or want to share your setup? Leave a comment below or connect with me on LinkedIn.

© 2025 Study From Here. Written by Deep Mistry.