A resource attribute is metadata describing the entity or infrastructure resource that produced telemetry. It can identify a hierarchy, such as a container, pod, Kubernetes cluster, and cloud region, so different signals can be correlated in observability backends. section 11.1.1
OpenTelemetry separates resource attributes from signal attributes. Resource attributes describe where telemetry came from; signal attributes describe details specific to traces, metrics, or logs. Semantic conventions provide shared names and, sometimes, shared values for both kinds of metadata. section 4.6 section 11.1.1
Service running in an EKS cluster
For svc-wow in the boom namespace, running in EKS cluster prod-42 in eu-west-1, the pod can serve as the signal source. Resource attributes identify the surrounding cluster and region, allowing HTTP metrics to be related to telemetry from the same service environment. section 11.1.1
Table 11.1 Overview of signal correlations (view table figure)
Use the signal-correlation table to navigate relationships among traces, metrics, and logs after resource metadata establishes their common origin. section 11.1.1
