observability-edot-python-migrate

name: observability-edot-python-migrate description: > Migrate a Python application from the classic Elastic APM Python agent to the EDOT Python agent. Use when switching from elastic-apm to elastic-opentelemetry. metadata: author: elastic version: 0.1.0

EDOT Python Migration

Read the migration guide before making changes:

• Migration guide
• EDOT Python setup
• EDOT Python configuration

Guidelines

1. Remove ALL classic APM references: elastic-apm from requirements, ElasticAPM(app) / elasticapm.contrib.* from application code, app.config['ELASTIC_APM'] blocks, and all ELASTIC_APM_* env vars
2. Install elastic-opentelemetry via pip (add to requirements.txt or equivalent)
3. Run edot-bootstrap --action=install during image build to install auto-instrumentation packages for detected libraries
4. Wrap the application entrypoint with opentelemetry-instrument — e.g. opentelemetry-instrument gunicorn app:app. Without this, no telemetry is collected
5. Set exactly three required environment variables:
   • OTEL_SERVICE_NAME (replaces ELASTIC_APM_SERVICE_NAME)
   • OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT — must be the managed OTLP endpoint or EDOT Collector URL. Do NOT reuse the old ELASTIC_APM_SERVER_URL value. Never use an APM Server URL (no apm-server, no :8200, no /intake/v2/events)
   • OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_HEADERS — "Authorization=ApiKey <key>" or "Authorization=Bearer <token>" (replaces ELASTIC_APM_SECRET_TOKEN)
6. Do NOT set OTEL_TRACES_EXPORTER, OTEL_METRICS_EXPORTER, or OTEL_LOGS_EXPORTER — the defaults are already correct
7. Never run both classic elastic-apm and EDOT on the same application

Examples

See the EDOT Python migration guide for complete examples.