---
title: "Resources"
source: OpenTelemetry Documentation
source_url: https://github.com/open-telemetry/opentelemetry.io
licence: CC-BY-4.0
domain: engineering
subdomain: opentelemetry-docs
date_added: 2026-04-25
---

## Introduction

{{% docs/languages/resources-intro %}}

If you use [Jaeger](https://www.jaegertracing.io/) as your observability
backend, resource attributes are grouped under the **Process** tab:

![A screenshot from Jaeger showing an example output of resource attributes associated to a trace](screenshot-jaeger-resources.png)

A resource is added to the `TracerProvider` or `MetricProvider` when they are
created during initialization. This association cannot be changed later. After a
resource is added, all spans and metrics produced from a `Tracer` or `Meter`
from the provider will have the resource associated with them.

## Semantic Attributes with SDK-provided Default Value

There are attributes provided by the OpenTelemetry SDK. One of them is the
`service.name`, which represents the logical name of the service. By default,
SDKs will assign the value `unknown_service` for this value, so it is
recommended to set it explicitly, either in code or via setting the environment
variable `OTEL_SERVICE_NAME`.

Additionally, the SDK will also provide the following resource attributes to
identify itself: `telemetry.sdk.name`, `telemetry.sdk.language` and
`telemetry.sdk.version`.

## Resource Detectors

Most language-specific SDKs provide a set of resource detectors that can be used
to automatically detect resource information from the environment. Common
resource detectors include:

- [Operating System](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/os/)
- [Host](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/host/)
- [Process and Process Runtime](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/process/)
- [Container](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/container/)
- [Kubernetes](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/k8s/)
- [Cloud-Provider-Specific Attributes](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/#cloud-provider-specific-attributes)
- [and more](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/)

## Custom resources

You can also provide your own resource attributes. You can either provide them
in code or via populating the environment variable `OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES`.
If applicable, use the
[semantic conventions for your resource attributes](/docs/specs/semconv/resource).
For example, you can provide the name of your
[deployment environment](/docs/specs/semconv/resource/deployment-environment/)
using `deployment.environment.name`:

```shell
env OTEL_RESOURCE_ATTRIBUTES=deployment.environment.name=production yourApp
```
