Databricks Apps telemetry is now generally available with Unity Catalog

Telemetry for Databricks Apps is now generally available (GA). It collects traces, logs, and metrics using the OpenTelemetry (OTel) protocol and writes them directly to managed Unity Catalog tables.

Use cases

Imagine you need to audit usage and debug production issues in your app. With this feature, you can:

• Automatically capture system logs and usage events such as user logins and direct API requests.
• Store metrics and traces in dedicated tables (otel_metrics, otel_spans, and otel_logs).
• Query error logs and authentication events directly using Databricks SQL.

How to use

Configure the telemetry destination using the Databricks CLI and redeploy your application:

databricks apps update my_app --json '{
  "telemetry_export_destinations": [
    {
      "unity_catalog": {
        "logs_table": "my_catalog.my_schema.prefix-otel_logs",
        "metrics_table": "my_catalog.my_schema.otel_metrics",
        "traces_table": "my_catalog.my_schema.otel_spans"
      }
    }
  ]
}'

What happens in this code:

1. The command specifies the destination catalog and schema.
2. It maps the specific tables for logs, metrics, and traces.

databricks apps deploy my_app

What happens in this code:

1. The application is redeployed.
2. Telemetry starts flowing into Unity Catalog.

Limitations and requirements

• Available in supported AWS regions.
• Target tables must be managed Delta tables in the same region as your workspace.
• Maximum log line size is 1 MB per log line.
• Ingestion is billed as Lakeflow Connect usage (Jobs Serverless SKU).