Exporting traces to Jaeger

Document updated on Feb 3, 2023

The KrakenD exporter to Jaeger allows you to submit spans to a Jaeger Collector (HTTP) or Jaeger Agent (UDP) automatically.

Jaeger is an open-source, end-to-end distributed tracing system that allows you to monitor and troubleshoot transactions in complex distributed systems. Use Jaeger when you want to see the complete flow of a user request through KrakenD and its connected services.

The Opencensus Jaeger exporter allows you to export spans to Jaeger. Enabling it only requires you to add the jaeger exporter in the opencensus module. You can post spans using two different approaches:

• Submit spans to an Agent (Thrift over UDP) - using agent_endpoint
• Submit spans to a Collector (Thrift over HTTP) - using endpoint

You can test this setup by running the All in One official Jaeger image and opening the necessary ports. For instance, to run a Jaeger container for UDP and HTTP support do:

$docker run -d --name jaeger -e COLLECTOR_ZIPKIN_HTTP_PORT=9411 \
-p 5775:5775/udp -p 6831:6831/udp -p 6832:6832/udp \
-p 5778:5778 -p 16686:16686 -p 14268:14268 -p 9411:9411 \
jaegertracing/all-in-one:latest

Then use agent_endpoint pointing to jaeger:6831 for the Jaeger Agent (UDP) or endpoint pointing to http://jaeger:14268 for the Jaeger Collector (HTTP).

Collector - Thrift over HTTP

When you don’t have a Jaeger Agent deployed next to the application, you can submit all spans to a Jaeger Collector over HTTP/HTTPS somewhere else. To do that, use the endpoint configuration option inside jaeger, as follows:

{
  "extra_config":{
    "telemetry/opencensus": {
      "sample_rate": 100,
      "reporting_period": 0,
      "exporters": {
        "jaeger": {
          "endpoint": "http://jaeger:14268/api/traces",
          "service_name":"krakend",
          "buffer_max_count": 1000
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

You can find a running demo with Jaeger using docker-compose on KrakenD Playground.

Agent - Thrift over UDP

When you want to send spans to a Jaeger Agent locally over UDP in Thrift format, you need to use the agent_endpoint configuration. To configure the gateway to work with an agent, you will need the following:

{
  "extra_config":{
    "telemetry/opencensus": {
      "sample_rate": 100,
      "reporting_period": 0,
      "exporters": {
        "jaeger": {
          "agent_endpoint": "jaeger:6831",
          "service_name":"krakend",
          "buffer_max_count": 1000
        }
      }
    }
  }
}

Jaeger configuration options

As with all OpenCensus exporters, you can add optional settings in the telemetry/opencensus level:

Then, the exporters key must contain the jaeger entry with the following properties: