Show HN: Dash0 – Dev-Friendly OpenTelemetry Observability with Open Standards
dash0.comHey HN!
After building an observability software (Instana) and selling it to IBM, I wanted to approach observability differently this time—simpler, more open, and built with developers like me in mind. That’s why I started Dash0.
Dash0 is natively built on OpenTelemetry, so logs, metrics, and traces are handled without extra hoops. You can send data via OTLP directly, through an OpenTelemetry Collector, or use our open-source Kubernetes operator to get started quickly.
I didn’t want a tool that forces people into proprietary systems, so Dash0 supports PromQL for querying and alerting and Perses for dashboards. If you’ve already got queries or alerts from Prometheus, you can reuse them with Dash0 without any friction. We went the extra mile, exposing logging and tracing data to PromQL, too, in a way that feels native.
One thing I always found frustrating about other tools was the need for more context. Dash0 leverages OpenTelemetry’s semantic conventions to tie all signals together. It correlates logs, metrics, and traces around the resource concept, which makes it easier to filter, search, and navigate between dependencies.
On the user experience side, I focused on making it developer- and SRE-friendly. Everything has full keyboard support, quick filtering with previews and guidance, and APIs that help you get answers fast, not just clicks and dashboards. I wanted something that feels snappy and productive, not clunky and unwieldy.
Dash0 is still in its early days, but it’s a tool I would have wanted myself—an open platform that rejects lock-in and works with the tools and open standards we already use in the cloud-native community.
I’d love to hear your feedback, suggestions, or thoughts on observability in general. In kubernetes having "version one, minor whatever" isn't meaningful because I can assure you with absolute confidence that 1.2 != 1.30 so it would be helpful to include the actual, no kidding, minimum version that you support https://www.dash0.com/documentation/dash0/dash0-kubernetes-o... Chasing https://github.com/dash0hq/dash0-operator/blob/0.35.3/go.mod... into https://github.com/kubernetes/client-go/tree/v0.31.3#compati... doesn't even mention any of the 1.30+ series but based solely upon the .31 part it sure does seem like it's a bleeding edge client-go Very good point. I ran an extensive test suite today with a lot of different Kubernetes versions, and the outcome is that anything between 1.21 and 1.31 works. I'll update our docs to specify an official minimum version. Disclaimer: I work at Dash0 and I'm the lead developer for our Kubernetes operator :) We explicitly test 1.28+. But I have in front of me a 1.27.13 and the operator works on it without issues. And probably goes way further back than that. What is the oldest version of Kubernetes you have seen in the wild recently? Disclaimer: I work at Dash0. What’s the difference between this and other o11y tools that use Otel? Seems like just a new UI + storage layer for otel. Every o11y company is now allowing for telemetry to be sent via otel, so how is this any more “open” or “lock-in” free than any other vendor? You’re absolutely right — while most observability vendors support receiving data via OTLP, they often convert it into a proprietary data format. This strips away the power of OpenTelemetry’s semantic conventions, such as OTel Resources. These conventions are incredibly powerful for adding context and correlating metrics, logs, and spans seamlessly. If you haven’t tried leveraging them yet, it’s worth it — the difference is huge. Another key source of lock-in is dashboards and alerts. Teams often invest time creating hundreds of dashboards and alerting rules, only to face the painful process of recreating them when switching tools. At Dash0, we tackle these lock-in points head-on:
1. PromQL for everything — not just metrics but also logs and spans. Plus, you can import/export Prometheus alerts (as code), making it easy to reuse existing projects like Awesome Prometheus Alerts: https://samber.github.io/awesome-prometheus-alerts/
2. Perses for dashboards — a CNCF-backed open standard. You can import/export dashboards (as code), ensuring portability and independence from any vendor. By adopting open standards like OpenTelemetry, PromQL, and Perses, you keep your observability stack flexible, portable, and future-proof — no more vendor lock-in. i like the philosophy! do ya'll provide a specific collector/agent or do users send directly from the community otel collector? Dash0 currently doesn't offer an own agent or a distribution of OpenTelemetry Collector. You can use anything which is sending OTLP. If your applications have been instrumented accordingly, you don't necessarily need a separate agent but can let the OpenTelemetry SDK send directly to Dash0. Dash0 offers a Kubernetes operator for getting your data in without much effort:
https://github.com/dash0hq/dash0-operator Disclaimer: I am working at Dash0. gotcha, thanks for answering! i guess also disclaimer: I work at Datadog.