Set up distributed tracing

Dapr integrates seamlessly with OpenTelemetry for telemetry and tracing. It is recommended to run Dapr with tracing enabled for any production scenario. Since Dapr uses OpenTelemetry, you can configure various exporters for tracing and telemetry data based on your environment, whether it is running in the cloud or on-premises.

How to configure distributed tracing with Zipkin on Kubernetes

The following steps will show you how to configure Dapr to send distributed tracing data to Zipkin running as a container in your Kubernetes cluster, and how to view them.

Setup

First, deploy Zipkin:

kubectl run zipkin --image openzipkin/zipkin --port 9411

Create a Kubernetes Service for the Zipkin pod:

kubectl expose deploy zipkin --type ClusterIP --port 9411

Next, create the following YAML file locally:

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
  name: zipkin
spec:
  tracing:
    enabled: true
    exporterType: zipkin
    exporterAddress: "http://zipkin.default.svc.cluster.local:9411/api/v2/spans"
    expandParams: true
    includeBody: true

Finally, deploy the Dapr configuration:

kubectl apply -f config.yaml

In order to enable this configuration for your Dapr sidecar, add the following annotation to your pod spec template:

annotations:
  dapr.io/config: "zipkin"

That’s it! your sidecar is now configured for use with Open Census and Zipkin.

Viewing Tracing Data

To view traces, connect to the Zipkin Service and open the UI:

kubectl port-forward svc/zipkin 9411:9411

On your browser, go to http://localhost:9411 and you should see the Zipkin UI.

zipkin

How to configure distributed tracing with Zipkin when running in stand-alone mode

For standalone mode, create an Dapr Configuration CRD file locally and reference it with the Dapr CLI.

Create the following YAML file:

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
  name: zipkin
spec:
  tracing:
    enabled: true
    exporterType: zipkin
    exporterAddress: "http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans"
    expandParams: true
    includeBody: true

Launch Zipkin using Docker:

docker run -d -p 9411:9411 openzipkin/zipkin

Launch Dapr with the --config param:

dapr run --app-id mynode --app-port 3000 --config ./config.yaml node app.js

Tracing Configuration

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

tracing:
    enabled: true
    exporterType: zipkin
    exporterAddress: ""
    expandParams: true
    includeBody: true

The following table lists the different properties.

Property	Type	Description
enabled	bool	Set tracing to be enabled or disabled
exporterType	string	Name of the Open Census exporter to use. For example: Zipkin, Azure Monitor, etc
exporterAddress	string	URL of the exporter
expandParams	bool	When true, expands parameters passed to HTTP endpoints
includeBody	bool	When true, includes the request body in the tracing event

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