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Phase 1a: OpenTelemetry plan documentation — architecture, design, strategy#6436

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Phase 1a: OpenTelemetry plan documentation — architecture, design, strategy#6436
pratikmankawde wants to merge 1 commit intodevelopfrom
pratik/otel-phase1a-plan-docs

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@pratikmankawde pratikmankawde commented Feb 26, 2026

PR Chain: #6436 (this PR)#6437#6438#6424#6425#6426#6427#6433 / #6439
Base: develop

High Level Overview of Change

Add comprehensive planning documentation for integrating OpenTelemetry distributed tracing into rippled. This is the first PR in a stacked series that lays the architectural foundation before any code changes.

Stacked PR chain: Phase 1a (this) → [Phase 1b: Telemetry infra] → [Phase 1c: RPC integration] → PR #6424 → PR #6425 → PR #6426 → PR #6427

Context of Change

Before implementing telemetry, we need a thorough analysis of rippled's architecture and a clear plan for where and how to instrument it. This documentation covers:

  • Tracing fundamentals — W3C Trace Context, span lifecycle, sampling strategies
  • Architecture analysis — rippled's threading model, RPC flow, tx processing, consensus
  • Design decisions — why OpenTelemetry, C++ SDK trade-offs, conditional compilation approach
  • Implementation strategy — phased rollout plan with code samples
  • Configuration reference — full [telemetry] config section specification
  • Implementation phases — 5-phase roadmap from infra to production dashboards
  • Backend comparison — Jaeger vs Zipkin vs Grafana Tempo vs commercial options
  • POC task list — detailed checklist for the proof-of-concept implementation

Type of Change

  • Documentation update

API Impact

None — documentation only.

Next Tasks

  • Phase 1b: Core telemetry library and build system integration
  • Phase 1c: RPC layer tracing instrumentation
  • Phase 2+: Transaction tracing, consensus tracing, dashboards

Add comprehensive planning documentation for the OpenTelemetry
distributed tracing integration:

- Tracing fundamentals and concepts
- Architecture analysis of rippled's tracing surface area
- Design decisions and trade-offs
- Implementation strategy and code samples
- Configuration reference
- Implementation phases roadmap
- Observability backend comparison
- POC task list and presentation materials

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
@pratikmankawde pratikmankawde force-pushed the pratik/otel-phase1a-plan-docs branch from 8794ef9 to a6a6a7c Compare February 27, 2026 17:50
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