Glossary · Observability
What Is Telemetry?
Written by
Shiv Chandra Pathak
Published
May 2026
Reading time
4 min read
Telemetry is the raw signal a system emits about itself, and it is the foundation everything else in observability is built on.
Telemetry is the data a system emits about its own behaviour, primarily the three signals of traces, metrics and logs (with profiling emerging as a fourth), that you collect and analyse to understand what the system is doing.
The signals of telemetry
Telemetry is usually described as three signals. Metrics are numeric measurements over time; traces follow requests across services; logs are timestamped records of events. Continuous profiling, which samples code execution, is increasingly treated as a fourth signal. Together they describe a system's behaviour from the outside.
Telemetry versus observability
Telemetry is the data; observability is what you can do with it. Emitting telemetry is necessary but not sufficient, the value comes from being able to correlate the signals and answer questions about the system, which is the difference between having data and having observability.
How it fits Opstral
Telemetry Ops is Opstral's pillar for collecting this telemetry over OpenTelemetry and turning it into clean, correlated signal for Sentinel AI to act on.
Frequently asked questions
What are the three types of telemetry?
Metrics, traces and logs, with continuous profiling increasingly considered a fourth signal.
Is telemetry the same as monitoring?
No. Telemetry is the data emitted; monitoring and observability are practices that use that data to understand and alert on system behaviour.