OpenTelemetry + CloudWatch Logs Insights: Tracing Serverless Apps

Correlating OpenTelemetry traces with CloudWatch Logs Insights across Lambda and Step Functions is a common senior interview scenario — here's exactly how to answer it. You'll learn: How to propagate trace context (W3C TraceContext headers) across Lambda invocations and Step Functions state transitions so trace IDs land in your structured logs Configuring the AWS Distro for OpenTelemetry (ADOT) Lambda layer to auto-instrument functions without cold-start penalties Writing CloudWatch Logs Insights queries that join on trace_id to reconstruct an end-to-end execution timeline across services Where correlation breaks — async Step Functions callbacks, missing X-Amzn-Trace-Id propagation, and log sampling mismatches Trade-offs between ADOT, X-Ray native SDK, and a third-party collector like the OpenTelemetry Collector on Fargate Keywords: OpenTelemetry Lambda tracing, CloudWatch Logs Insights trace correlation, ADOT Step Functions, serverless observability interview questions 🎧 Listen, then go deeper — DevOps & Cloud interview-prep ebooks at DevOpsInterview.Cloud