A typical setup is to run a separate OpenTelemetry collector process on the same host as the app. The app connects to it via localhost on a standard port (although you can override it using env vars).

The collector process then sends the metrics/traces/logs to the observability sink. But there's nothing at all preventing you from sending telemetry directly to the observability sink.

It's just outbound HTTP or GRPC, and it doesn't have to go over public Internet.

> In a runtime like Lambda, how would you avoid the need to run an edge collector?

Here's my setup (in Go, very simplified):

> // Instantiate a new slog logger > logger := otelslog.NewLogger("root", otelslog.WithLoggerProvider(otelLogger)) > // Use the logger as needed

My code uses proper Go loggers exclusively. I also redirected the stdout and stderr to a goroutine (via the usual close(2)+open() trick) to serve as a catch-all sink for anything that slips the net.