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# We Deleted Our Observability Stack and Rebuilt It with OTEL: 12 Engineers to 4 at 20K+ clusters


- **Event:** Conference India 2026

## Description

In 2021, DigitalOcean's internal observability hit a breaking point at 5,000 clusters. We were losing critical audit logs. Metrics scraping was failing under sheer volume. Our team faced a choice: stop growing or fundamentally re-architect. 

We chose re-architecture. A year later, we're seamlessly managing 20,000+ production clusters, processing 460+TB with zero log loss and complete metrics coverage. How? By rebuilding our observability stack with OTEL standards, building custom lightweight collectors, and leveraging Kubernetes-native patterns that scale automatically.

You’ll learn:
1. How we leveraged the upstream OTEL Operator to manage OTEL deployments across 20K+ clusters
2. What we got WRONG: First iteration of OTEL blasted our storage with 250M+ log files (we'll show the mistakes so you don't repeat them)
3. Operational efficiency: 4 engineers managing 20K+ clusters' observability (previously 12+ engineers struggling at 5K)

## Speaker

### [Yash Sharma](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/@yash-sharma)

Developer Advocate, Digital Ocean


## Related talks at this congress

- [How We Cut Our API's p99 Latency from Minutes to Under a Second](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1987-how-we-cut-our-api-s) — Deepak Agrawal
- [What I Got Wrong Shipping an MCP Server for Live Infrastructure](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1999-what-i-got-wrong) — Pritesh Kiri
- [Shipping MCP to Real Users: Scaling, Auth, and the PII Leak You Didn't See Coming](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1993-shipping-mcp-to-real) — Hadar Geva
- [Multi-Cloud Isn't a Project. It's a Side Effect.](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/events/conference-india-2026/sessions/1989-multi-cloud-isn-t-a) — Antonio Mendoza Pérez, Gaurav Thadani

## Watch remotely

Can’t make it to Bengaluru? Watch this session live with Pro. You also get:

- All full videos, bookmarks, and playlists
- World Congress livestreams

[See pricing](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/pricing)

## Links

- [Get tickets](https://www.wearedevelopers.com/conference-india/tickets)