Jaeger

After completing this task, you understand how to have your application participate in tracing with Jaeger, regardless of the language, framework, or platform you use to build your application.

This task uses the Bookinfo sample as the example application.

To learn how Istio handles tracing, visit this task’s overview.

Before you begin

1. Follow the Jaeger installation documentation to deploy Jaeger into your cluster.

2. Deploy the Bookinfo sample application.

Configure Istio for distributed tracing

Configure an extension provider

Install Istio with an extension provider referring to the Jaeger collector service:

$ cat <<EOF > ./tracing.yaml
apiVersion: install.istio.io/v1alpha1
kind: IstioOperator
spec:
  meshConfig:
    enableTracing: true
    defaultConfig:
      tracing: {} # disable legacy MeshConfig tracing options
    extensionProviders:
    - name: jaeger
      opentelemetry:
        port: 4317
        service: jaeger-collector.istio-system.svc.cluster.local
EOF
$ istioctl install -f ./tracing.yaml --skip-confirmation

Enable tracing

Enable tracing by applying the following configuration:

$ kubectl apply -f - <<EOF
apiVersion: telemetry.istio.io/v1
kind: Telemetry
metadata:
  name: mesh-default
  namespace: istio-system
spec:
  tracing:
  - providers:
    - name: jaeger
EOF

Accessing the dashboard

The Remotely Accessing Telemetry Addons task details how to configure access to the Istio addons through a gateway.

For testing (and temporary access), you may also use port-forwarding. Use the following, assuming you’ve deployed Jaeger to the istio-system namespace:

$ istioctl dashboard jaeger

Generating traces using the Bookinfo sample

1. When the Bookinfo application is up and running, access http://$GATEWAY_URL/productpage one or more times to generate trace information.

   To see trace data, you must send requests to your service. The number of requests depends on Istio’s sampling rate and can be configured using the Telemetry API. With the default sampling rate of 1%, you need to send at least 100 requests before the first trace is visible. To send 100 requests to the productpage service, use the following command:

   $ for i in $(seq 1 100); do curl -s -o /dev/null "http://$GATEWAY_URL/productpage"; done

2. From the left-hand pane of the dashboard, select productpage.default from the Service drop-down list and click Find Traces:

   

3. Click on the most recent trace at the top to see the details corresponding to the latest request to the /productpage:

   

4. The trace is comprised of a set of spans, where each span corresponds to a Bookinfo service, invoked during the execution of a /productpage request, or internal Istio component, for example: istio-ingressgateway.

Cleanup

1. Remove any istioctl processes that may still be running using control-C or:

   $ killall istioctl

2. If you are not planning to explore any follow-on tasks, refer to the Bookinfo cleanup instructions to shutdown the application.