OpenTelemetry Instrumentation for Redis

opentelemetry-instrumentation-redis automatically instruments the redis Python client so every Redis command (GET, SET, pipelines, pub/sub) creates an OpenTelemetry span, with no changes needed at the call site. It supports both the synchronous redis.StrictRedis client and the async redis.asyncio.Redis client via one RedisInstrumentor().instrument() call, or per-client instrumentation via instrument_client().

Spans include Redis semantic-convention attributes such as the database system, command name, and (optionally) the command arguments, and support request/response hooks for adding custom span attributes around each Redis call.

What You Get

• A RedisInstrumentor that instruments all Redis client instances with one .instrument() call
• Support for both sync (redis.StrictRedis) and async (redis.asyncio.Redis) clients
• Per-client instrumentation via instrument_client() for selective tracing
• Redis semantic-convention span attributes (db system, command name, and optionally command arguments)
• Request/response hook support for adding custom span attributes around each command

Common Use Cases

• Tracing cache reads/writes in a service that uses Redis as an application cache
• Correlating Redis command latency with the rest of a request’s distributed trace
• Debugging slow or failing Redis pipelines and pub/sub operations with span-level detail
• Auditing Redis command patterns in a service for capacity planning or query optimization

Under The Hood

Architecture — the instrumentor subclasses BaseInstrumentor and wraps the command-execution entry points of both redis.StrictRedis and redis.asyncio.Redis (src/opentelemetry/instrumentation/redis/__init__.py, ~810 lines) so every command dispatched through either client creates a span with database semantic-convention attributes, restoring the original methods on _uninstrument(); a separate instrument_client() path allows instrumenting one client instance rather than patching the client classes globally. Tech Stack — pure Python, depending on opentelemetry-api, opentelemetry-instrumentation, and opentelemetry-semantic-conventions from the same monorepo plus redis as the instrumented target; built with hatchling and versioned in lockstep with the rest of the contrib release train. Code Quality — covered by a single but extensive test_redis.py file (1,751 lines) exercising sync and async clients, pipelines, and hook behavior, reflecting the breadth of the Redis command surface being instrumented. API Design — RedisInstrumentor().instrument() covers the common case in one line for both sync and async clients, while instrument_client() and request/response hooks give finer-grained control without requiring a different instrumentor per client type.