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The phoenix server is collector of traces over OTLP

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Instrumentation

In order for an application to emit traces for analysis, the application must be instrumented. Your application can be manually instrumented or be automatically instrumented.

With phoenix, there a set of plugins (instrumentors) that can be added to your application’s startup process that perform auto-instrumentation. These plugins collect spans for your application and export them for collection and visualization. For phoenix, all the instrumentors are managed via a single repository called OpenInference. The comprehensive list of instrumentors can be found in the how-to guide.

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Exporter

An exporter takes the spans created via instrumentation and exports them to a collector. In simple terms, it just sends the data to the Phoenix. When using Phoenix, most of this is completely done under the hood when you call instrument on an instrumentor.

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Collector

The Phoenix server is a collector and a UI that helps you troubleshoot your application in real time. When you run or run phoenix (e.x. px.launch_app(), container), Phoenix starts receiving spans from any application(s) that is exporting spans to it.

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OpenTelememetry Protocol

OpenTelemetetry Protocol (or OTLP for short) is the means by which traces arrive from your application to the Phoenix collector. Phoenix currently supports OTLP over HTTP.