Instrumentation of AWS Lambda does not create parent span

[elnatantorres]

Hi, guys! How are you?

I am instrumentating an AWS Lambda with OTEL and it generates the span of internal operations (like HTTP request), but it does not generate the parent span. Is it an expected behavior for the Lambda instrumentation not to create the parent span with the data from request and response hooks?

In my setup I am exporting the traces with OTLP to Grafana Alloy. Below my instrumentation:

Packages

"@opentelemetry/api": "1.9.0",
"@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node": "0.64.1",
"@opentelemetry/core": "1.28.0",
"@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http": "0.49.1",
"@opentelemetry/instrumentation": "0.205.0",
"@opentelemetry/propagator-aws-xray-lambda": "0.55.1",
"@opentelemetry/resources": "2.1.0",
"@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node": "1.25.1",
"@opentelemetry/semantic-conventions": "1.37.0",

Instrumentation

const { diag, DiagConsoleLogger, DiagLogLevel } = require('@opentelemetry/api');
const { getNodeAutoInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/auto-instrumentations-node');
const {
  CompositePropagator,
  W3CBaggagePropagator,
  W3CTraceContextPropagator,
} = require("@opentelemetry/core");
const { OTLPTraceExporter } = require('@opentelemetry/exporter-trace-otlp-http');
const { registerInstrumentations } = require('@opentelemetry/instrumentation');
const { AWSXRayLambdaPropagator } = require('@opentelemetry/propagator-aws-xray-lambda');
const { resourceFromAttributes } = require('@opentelemetry/resources');
const { BatchSpanProcessor, NodeTracerProvider } = require('@opentelemetry/sdk-trace-node');
const { ATTR_SERVICE_NAME, ATTR_SERVICE_VERSION } = require('@opentelemetry/semantic-conventions');

/**
 * Name of the [deployment environment](https://opentelemetry.io/docs/specs/semconv/resource/deployment-environment/) (aka deployment tier).
 * @example staging
 * @example production
 */
const ATTR_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT_NAME = 'deployment.environment.name';

diag.setLogger(new DiagConsoleLogger(), DiagLogLevel.ALL);

const resource = resourceFromAttributes({
  [ATTR_SERVICE_NAME]: 'test-app',
  [ATTR_SERVICE_VERSION]: '1.0.0',
  [ATTR_DEPLOYMENT_ENVIRONMENT_NAME]: process.env.SST_STAGE,
});

const collectorOptions = {
  url: `${process.env.OTEL_EXPORTER_OTLP_ENDPOINT}`,
};
const otlpExporter = new OTLPTraceExporter(collectorOptions);
let processor = new BatchSpanProcessor(otlpExporter, {
  maxQueueSize: 1000,
  maxExportBatchSize: 500,
  scheduledDelayMillis: 500,
  exportTimeoutMillis: 30000,
});

const provider = new NodeTracerProvider({ resource, spanProcessors: [processor] });

provider.register({
  propagator: new CompositePropagator({
    propagators: [
      new W3CTraceContextPropagator(),
      new W3CBaggagePropagator(),
      new AWSXRayLambdaPropagator(),
    ],
  }),
});

registerInstrumentations({
  instrumentations: [
    getNodeAutoInstrumentations({
      '@opentelemetry/instrumentation-aws-lambda': {
        enabled: true,
        requestHook: (span, { event, context }) => {
          span.setAttribute('faas.name', context.functionName);
        },
        responseHook: (span, { err, res }) => {
          if (err instanceof Error) span.setAttribute('faas.error', err.message);
          if (res) span.setAttribute('faas.res', res);
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
});

Handler

import * as https from 'https';

function getRequest() {
  const url = 'https://opentelemetry.io/';
  return new Promise((resolve, reject) => {
    const req = https.get(url, res => {
      resolve(res.statusCode);
    });
    req.on('error', err => {
      reject(new Error(err.message));
    });
  });
}

export const handler = async () => {
  try {
    const result = await getRequest();
    return { statusCode: 200, body: JSON.stringify({ message: 'Success' }) };
  } catch (error) {
    throw error;
  }
};

Trace in Alloy