How we configured OpenTelemetry logs in Rails

A Rails project was configured to use OpenTelemetry for observability without vendor lock-in, enabling the export of logs, metrics, and traces in a standard format (OTLP) that can be switched between vendors like Datadog, New Relic, or Grafana Cloud. The team bypassed the standard OpenTelemetry Collector architecture and exported logs directly from the Ruby SDK to Grafana Cloud using several gems (opentelemetry-sdk, opentelemetry-logs-sdk, opentelemetry-exporter-otlp, and others), configured via environment variables for the endpoint and authentication credentials. This approach keeps infrastructure simple for applications with low log volume while maintaining vendor flexibility.