Adds Tyk API Gateway blog post

content/en/blog/2023/tyk-api-gateway/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,110 @@
+---
+title: Tyk API Gateway's Native OpenTelemetry Integration
+linkTitle: Tyk API Gateway's Native OpenTelemetry Integration
+date: 2023-11-07
+author: >-
+  [Sonja Chevre](https://github.com/SonjaChevre) (Tyk Technologies)
+---
+
+{{< blog/integration-badge >}}
+
+We're excited to announce that
+[Tyk API Gateway](https://github.com/TykTechnologies/tyk) has first-class
+support for OpenTelemetry, with native instrumentation built directly into the
+gateway. With Tyk's native OpenTelemetry support, developers and API platform
+teams get end-to-end observability into their API traffic, enabling faster
+troubleshooting and problem resolution.
+
+## Why OpenTelemetry
+
+API gateways, as the front-line proxies for APIs, play a crucial role in both
+the management and security of API traffic. A multitude of critical actions
+occur at the API gateway level. It is essential to monitor all requests,
+including those that never reach the upstream services because of rate-limiting
+rules, an authentication problem, or a caching mechanism. Collecting telemetry
+data at the API Gateway gives a clear entrance point and a complete picture of
+the journey of all the API consumers.
+
+Before OpenTelemetry, Tyk Gateway already supported over 10 different formats
+for exporting metrics, logs, and traces. Maintaining this support demanded
+substantial engineering resources. OpenTelemetry streamlines this process,
+enabling a more efficient and standardized approach to collecting and exporting
+telemetry data. As a result, our users gain the flexibility to transmit their
+telemetry data to an even broader array of
+[observability tools and vendors](/ecosystem/vendors/).
+
+We have now deprecated our support for OpenTracing in favor of OpenTelemetry for
+distributed tracing and plan to leverage OpenTelemetry to streamline the export
+of metrics and logs in the future.
+
+## How to Integrate Tyk with OpenTelemetry
+
+Starting with version 5.2,
+[Tyk API Gateway has native support for OpenTelemetry distributed tracing](https://tyk.io/docs/product-stack/tyk-gateway/advanced-configurations/distributed-tracing/open-telemetry/open-telemetry-overview/).
+Here is how to configure it, enable detailed tracing per API and instrumenting
+custom plugins.
+
+### Enable OpenTelemetry at Gateway Level
+
+Edit Tyk Gateway configuration file to enable OpenTelemetry support, like this:
+
+```json
+{
+  "opentelemetry": {
+    "enabled": true
+  }
+}
+```
+
+You can also enable OpenTelemetry by setting the corresponding environment
+variable: `TYK_GW_OPENTELEMETRY_ENABLED=TRUE`.
+
+By default, OpenTelemetry spans are exported using the gRPC protocol to
+`localhost:4317`. For more configuration options and default values, refer to
+the
+[documentation](https://tyk.io/docs/tyk-oss-gateway/configuration/#opentelemetry).
+
+Tyk will export two spans: one for the total duration of the API call and one
+span for the call to the upstream service, as shown in the following screenshot
+from Jaeger.
+
+![Typ API Gateway distributed trace](tyk-api-gateway-opentelemetry-trace.png)
+
+### Detailed tracing per APIs
+
+Upon enabling OpenTelemetry at the gateway level, you gain the flexibility to
+activate detailed tracing for particular APIs. To do so, simply adjust the
+corresponding API definition and toggle the `detailed_tracing` option to either
+`true` or `false`. The default value for this setting is `false`. With this
+configuration, Tyk will generate a span for every middleware operation carried
+out throughout the API request/response lifecycle. This includes actions like
+API version validation, authentication, authorization, rate limiting, and
+request and response transformation.
+
+Here you can quickly spot an issue reported by the rate limiting middleware:
+
+![Typ API Gateway distributed trace with middleware details](tyk-api-gateway-opentelemetry-trace-detail.png)
+
+### Instrumenting custom plugins with OpenTelemetry
+
+Tyk supports the use of custom plugins (also called custom middleware) to extend
+its functionality, making it a highly flexible and customizable API gateway
+solution. This extensibility allows developers to tailor Tyk to their specific
+needs, whether it's for enhancing security, adding new authentication methods,
+integrating with third-party services, or implementing custom request/response
+transformations.
+
+By instrumenting custom plugins with OpenTelemetry SDK or Tyk’s OpenTelemetry
+library implementation (wrapper of the OpenTelemetry SDK that all Tyk components
+are sharing for convenience), Tyk users can gain additional insights into their
+custom plugin behavior for better monitoring and quicker troubleshooting. More
+information in Tyk’s documentation:
+[OpenTelemetry Instrumentation in Go Plugins](https://tyk.io/docs/product-stack/tyk-gateway/advanced-configurations/plugins/otel-plugins/).
+
+## What's next?
+
+Now that the
+[first stable release of OTel Go metric SDK has been announced](/blog/2023/otel-go-metrics-sdk-stable/),
+we will be investigating support for OpenTelemetry metrics. Stay tuned for
+updates and don't hesitate to
+[reach out on Tyk's community with any feedback](https://community.tyk.io/).

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