OpenNMS vs OpenTelemetry: What are the differences?

Introduction

OpenNMS and OpenTelemetry are two popular tools used for monitoring and analytics. While they both serve the purpose of providing insights into application performance and availability, there are several key differences between the two.

1. Architecture: OpenNMS is a comprehensive network management system with a modular architecture, allowing it to monitor various types of devices and services. It consists of a set of components such as data collectors, data storage, and a web-based user interface. On the other hand, OpenTelemetry is a distributed observability framework focused on providing telemetry data from applications and infrastructure. It follows a more lightweight and decentralized architecture, with agents or libraries integrated into the applications themselves.

2. Scope of Monitoring: OpenNMS is primarily focused on network monitoring and management, providing features like fault management, performance monitoring, and event correlation. It offers in-depth visibility into network devices, server hardware, and services. OpenTelemetry, on the other hand, is more application-centric and focuses on collecting telemetry data from different sources within an application or infrastructure. It provides observability into distributed systems and microservices architectures.

3. Data Collection: OpenNMS relies on SNMP (Simple Network Management Protocol) and other network protocols for data collection. It can gather detailed metrics and events from network devices, servers, and services. OpenTelemetry, on the other hand, uses a combination of manual instrumentation and automatic tracing to collect telemetry data from applications. It provides libraries and SDKs for various programming languages to instrument code and generate telemetry data.

4. Integration and Ecosystem: OpenNMS has been around for a longer time and has a mature ecosystem of plugins and integrations with other tools and systems. It integrates with various management systems, databases, and notification mechanisms. OpenTelemetry, being a relatively newer framework, is rapidly adopting industry standards and gaining popularity. It has an active community and growing ecosystem of integrations with popular observability platforms.

5. Flexibility and Extensibility: OpenNMS offers a high degree of customization and extensibility, allowing users to add functionality through plugins and custom code. It provides a flexible rule-based event handling system and allows for customization of monitoring thresholds and policies. OpenTelemetry, while still extensible, follows a more standardized approach. It provides a set of well-defined APIs, libraries, and interfaces for instrumentation, making it easier to adopt and integrate with other systems.

6. Use Cases and Target Audience: OpenNMS is typically used by network administrators, IT operations teams, and service providers for managing and monitoring large-scale networks and systems. It is well-suited for enterprise-level deployments. OpenTelemetry, on the other hand, caters to application developers, DevOps teams, and cloud-native environments. It is designed to provide observability into distributed systems and modern application architectures like microservices.

In summary, OpenNMS is a comprehensive network management system with a modular architecture, focused on network monitoring and management, while OpenTelemetry is a distributed observability framework that collects telemetry data from applications and infrastructure, with a more application-centric approach and a focus on distributed systems.