Implementing Observability in .NET Applications with OpenTelemetry

Building reliable cloud-native systems requires deep visibility into how your software behaves under the hood. Understanding how to collect and interpret telemetry data is essential for diagnosing issues before they impact your users. This text-based course guides you through the core concepts of observability and shows you how to implement OpenTelemetry in modern .NET applications. You will learn to capture and analyze logs, metrics, and distributed traces to maintain healthy, high-performing systems. What you'll learn: - Understand the three pillars of observability: logs, metrics, and distributed traces. - Configure OpenTelemetry SDKs within a modern .NET application environment. - Implement structured logging and custom telemetry sources to capture rich application context. - Export telemetry data to backend analysis tools such as Application Insights. - Analyze distributed traces to isolate performance bottlenecks across microservices. The course begins with fundamental definitions of cloud-native observability before moving into step-by-step instrumentation of .NET services. You will read clear explanations and review practical, real-world code snippets designed to show you exactly how telemetry data flows from your application to your monitoring dashboards. This course is designed for backend developers, software engineers, and cloud professionals who are new to observability and want a clear, structured introduction using .NET and OpenTelemetry. No prior experience with telemetry frameworks is required. Start reading today to build more reliable, observable .NET applications.