Tracing on Dapr Docs

Distributed tracing overview

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dapr uses the Open Telemetry (OTEL) and Zipkin protocols for distributed traces. OTEL is the industry standard and is the recommended trace protocol to use.

Most observability tools support OTEL, including:

The following diagram demonstrates how Dapr (using OTEL and Zipkin protocols) integrates with multiple observability tools.

Scenarios

Tracing is used with service invocaton and pub/sub APIs. You can flow trace context between services that uses these APIs. There are two scenarios for how tracing is used:

W3C trace context overview

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dapr uses the Open Telemetry protocol, which in turn uses the W3C trace context for distributed tracing for both service invocation and pub/sub messaging. Dapr generates and propagates the trace context information, which can be sent to observability tools for visualization and querying.

Background

Distributed tracing is a methodology implemented by tracing tools to follow, analyze, and debug a transaction across multiple software components.

Typically, a distributed trace traverses more than one service, which requires it to be uniquely identifiable. Trace context propagation passes along this unique identification.

Configure Dapr to send distributed tracing data

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Note

It is recommended to run Dapr with tracing enabled for any production scenario. You can configure Dapr to send tracing and telemetry data to many observability tools based on your environment, whether it is running in the cloud or on-premises.

Configuration

The tracing section under the Configuration spec contains the following properties:

spec:
 tracing:
 samplingRate: "1"
 otel: 
 endpointAddress: "myendpoint.cluster.local:4317"
 headers:
 - name: "x-api-key"
 secretKeyRef:
 name: "my-secret-store"
 key: "otel-api-key"
 timeout: "30s"
 zipkin:
 endpointAddress: "https://..."

The following table lists the properties for tracing:

How-To: Set-up New Relic for distributed tracing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Prerequisites

Perpetually free New Relic account, 100 GB/month of free data ingest, 1 free full access user, unlimited free basic users

Configure Dapr tracing

Dapr natively captures metrics and traces that can be send directly to New Relic. The easiest way to export these is by configuring Dapr to send the traces to New Relic’s Trace API using the Zipkin trace format.

In order for the integration to send data to New Relic Telemetry Data Platform, you need a New Relic Insights Insert API key.

How-To: Set up Zipkin for distributed tracing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Configure self hosted mode

For self hosted mode, on running dapr init:

The following YAML file is created by default in $HOME/.dapr/config.yaml (on Linux/Mac) or %USERPROFILE%\.dapr\config.yaml (on Windows) and it is referenced by default on dapr run calls unless otherwise overridden `:

config.yaml

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
 name: daprConfig
 namespace: default
spec:
 tracing:
 samplingRate: "1"
 zipkin:
 endpointAddress: "http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans"

The openzipkin/zipkin docker container is launched on running dapr init or it can be launched with the following code.

Launch Zipkin using Docker:

How-To: Set up Dash0 for distributed tracing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dapr captures metrics, traces, and logs that can be sent directly to Dash0 through the OpenTelemetry Collector. Dash0 is an OpenTelemetry-native observability platform that provides comprehensive monitoring capabilities for distributed applications.

Configure Dapr tracing with the OpenTelemetry Collector and Dash0

By using the OpenTelemetry Collector with the OTLP exporter to send data to Dash0, you can configure Dapr to create traces for each application in your Kubernetes cluster and collect them in Dash0 for analysis and monitoring.

How-To: Set up Datadog for distributed tracing

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Dapr captures metrics and traces that can be sent directly to Datadog through the OpenTelemetry Collector Datadog exporter.

Configure Dapr tracing with the OpenTelemetry Collector and Datadog

Using the OpenTelemetry Collector Datadog exporter, you can configure Dapr to create traces for each application in your Kubernetes cluster and collect them in Datadog.

Before you begin, set up the OpenTelemetry Collector.

Add your Datadog API key to the ./deploy/opentelemetry-collector-generic-datadog.yaml file in the datadog exporter configuration section: