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Spacelift Unveils Run Observability

In a significant step for infrastructure orchestration, Spacelift has just launched its latest feature, Run Observability, aimed at refining how platform teams interact with OpenTofu. This powerful tool is designed to transform how users analyze run data by providing detailed insights about potential issues affecting the performance of their infrastructure. With Run Observability, teams can now pinpoint the specific reasons for slow or failed runs, taking the guesswork out of infrastructure management.

Understanding the Problem

Traditionally, platform teams faced difficulty determining the cause behind a sluggish or failed run. Complexities arose when trying to ascertain whether the issue stemmed from OpenTofu itself, a provider, a third-party API, or even their own code. Without a clear breakdown of the run process, diagnosing issues became a tedious task, often involving excessive scrolling through logs or re-running processes with debug settings enabled.

Run Observability changes this narrative by delivering clarity. By breaking down each OpenTofu run into specific phases—initiation, planning, and application—platform teams can see exactly where the bottleneck or failure point is located. For instance, if a GitHub outage coincides with a stalled phase in initialization, the tool identifies this, enabling teams to focus their troubleshooting efforts more effectively.

Revolutionizing Diagnostics

OpenTofu has integrated OpenTelemetry tracing capabilities since version 1.10, allowing the export of trace data to compatible backends. With Run Observability, Spacelift adds value by analyzing these traces against established rules and historical run data. This not only enhances visibility but also generates actionable insights, advising teams on how to rectify the issues they encounter.

Jonah Kowall, Senior Vice President of Product and Design at Spacelift, emphasizes the importance of this enhancement: "Visibility into infrastructure deployment runs has been a major blind spot. As the technologies used by platform teams evolve, understanding the 'why' behind deployments has become crucial. By collaborating with OpenTofu, we've created a solution that addresses these challenges directly."

The Rise of AI-Driven Runs

The introduction of AI has further complicated infrastructure management. According to Spacelift's Infrastructure Automation Report 2026, a staggering 76% of respondents are ready to implement AI-generated Terraform into production environments with little oversight. Consequently, this has resulted in an increase in both deployment runs and incidents stemming from AI, highlighting the need for robust observability tools like Run Observability.

Pawel Hytry, CEO of Spacelift, explains, "AI tools are responsible for creating more infrastructure changes, and that demands platform teams understand why failures occur with greater urgency. Run Observability delivers these insights directly, eliminating the frustrating need for manual diagnostics."

Future Developments and Availability

Now fully operational, Run Observability is available for Spacelift’s users, bringing immediate enhancements to how they manage their OpenTofu stacks. Interested teams can dive deeper into its features by referencing the Spacelift blog, which offers comprehensive guides and tutorials.

Additionally, Spacelift invites users to an informational webinar on November 19 to further explore the capabilities of Run Observability and how it can be leveraged for optimal infrastructure management.

FAQs

• - Do OpenTofu users need Spacelift to utilize these traces?

No, OpenTelemetry tracing is an integral part of open-source OpenTofu, allowing users to send traces to any compatible backend. Spacelift customers benefit from automated collection and analysis, enhancing efficiency.

• - Does this feature apply to Terraform?

Not currently. Run Observability is specific to Spacelift OpenTofu stacks, delivering insights that are not available for Terraform.

• - Are the analyses generated by AI?

No, while OpenTofu provides the raw trace data, Spacelift conducts the analysis with predefined rules to deliver clear insights to the users.

Spacelift’s Drive to Innovate

As a leader in the infrastructure orchestration space, Spacelift continues to support the Platform Engineering community as a major contributor to OpenTofu and the founding body behind IaCConf, the premier conference for infrastructure as code. Spacelift partners with notable companies like Duolingo, Figma, and 1Password, helping them manage their infrastructure with efficiency and speed.

For those interested in leveraging Spacelift’s groundbreaking solutions, you can sign up for a demo or initiate a free trial at Spacelift.io today.