---
title: "OpenTelemetry Basics on Heroku Fir"
description: "Heroku Fir includes OpenTelemetry as a built-in observability capability, addressing the need to monitor increasingly distributed and complex applications. The post introduces OpenTelemetry’s logs, metrics, and traces, while noting that events and profiles are under development. It distinguishes application-embedded SDKs, which generate and process telemetry, from standalone collectors that receive, process, and export data, although Fir acts as the central hub for telemetry pipelines. The walkthrough uses the Go getting-started app in a Fir space, creates Grafana Cloud credentials and environment variables, converts OTLP headers to JSON, and adds an HTTP Heroku Telemetry Drain with the CLI. After deployment and browser refreshes, application metrics appear in Grafana Cloud, followed by traces and logs."
---

# OpenTelemetry Basics on Heroku Fir

[Heroku](https://yomu.fyi/company/heroku) · Alex Arnell · May 27, 2025

**Type:** Tutorial

## Summary

Heroku Fir includes OpenTelemetry as a built-in observability capability, addressing the need to monitor increasingly distributed and complex applications. The post introduces OpenTelemetry’s logs, metrics, and traces, while noting that events and profiles are under development. It distinguishes application-embedded SDKs, which generate and process telemetry, from standalone collectors that receive, process, and export data, although Fir acts as the central hub for telemetry pipelines. The walkthrough uses the Go getting-started app in a Fir space, creates Grafana Cloud credentials and environment variables, converts OTLP headers to JSON, and adds an HTTP Heroku Telemetry Drain with the CLI. After deployment and browser refreshes, application metrics appear in Grafana Cloud, followed by traces and logs.

## Context

Applications are becoming increasingly distributed and complex, making observability important for gaining insight into their internal state. The post presents Fir’s built-in OpenTelemetry support as a way to simplify monitoring, troubleshooting, and improvement of these applications.

## Approach / What changed

Deploy the Go getting-started application to a Heroku Fir space, configure Grafana Cloud OpenTelemetry environment variables, convert the OTLP authorization header into the JSON format expected by the Heroku CLI, and add an HTTP telemetry drain.

## Takeaways

- OpenTelemetry standardizes collection and export of logs, metrics, and traces; events and profiles are described as signals under development.
- The OpenTelemetry SDK instruments applications and generates telemetry, while a Collector receives, processes, and exports telemetry to observability backends.
- A Heroku Telemetry Drain sends Fir application telemetry to Grafana Cloud; metrics appear first, with traces and logs visible after refreshing the deployed application.

**Tags:** [Grafana](https://yomu.fyi/topic/grafana), [Observability](https://yomu.fyi/topic/observability), [OpenTelemetry](https://yomu.fyi/topic/opentelemetry)

- Source: [Heroku](https://www.heroku.com/blog/opentelemetry-basics-on-heroku-fir)
- Source URL: https://www.heroku.com/blog/opentelemetry-basics-on-heroku-fir
- Ingested by Yomu: 2026-09-10T04:03:02.661Z

[Read original post](https://www.heroku.com/blog/opentelemetry-basics-on-heroku-fir)