Distributed Tracing Tools: Top 4 Tools and How to Choose

What Are Distributed Tracing Tools? 

Distributed tracing tools are software applications or platforms designed to monitor, visualize, and analyze the performance of distributed systems, such as microservices or service-oriented architectures. 

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These tools enable developers and operations teams to track and understand the flow of requests or transactions across various services and components, identify latency issues, detect bottlenecks, and improve overall system reliability and performance. 

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By providing a holistic view of a system's behavior, distributed tracing tools facilitate efficient troubleshooting and optimization of complex, distributed applications.

Core Functionality of Distributed Tracing Tools

Distributed tracing tools provide several core functionalities, which typically include:

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• Instrumentation: Libraries or SDKs for various programming languages that enable applications and services to generate and report trace data, including information about requests, transactions, and events.
• Trace propagation: Mechanisms to propagate trace context across service boundaries, ensuring that a single trace can be constructed from multiple services involved in handling a request or transaction.
• Data collection: Components or services that receive, process, and store the trace data generated by instrumented applications and services, often supporting various storage backends and data formats.
• Data processing: Mechanisms to aggregate, filter, and analyze trace data, enabling users to derive insights about the performance and behavior of their distributed systems.
• Visualization: User interfaces that present trace data in an easy-to-understand format, often providing features such as graphical representations of request flows, latency histograms, and filtering capabilities to help users explore and analyze traces.
• Alerting and notifications: Features that enable users to define thresholds, conditions, or patterns related to system performance, and receive notifications or trigger actions when these conditions are met, helping teams proactively identify and address issues.
• Integration: Support for integrating with other monitoring, observability, and logging tools, enabling users to correlate trace data with other system metrics and logs for a comprehensive understanding of system performance and behavior.
• Standardization and interoperability: Support for standard trace formats, context propagation mechanisms, and APIs, allowing for easier integration and interoperability between various distributed tracing tools, as well as compatibility with other observability and monitoring systems.

Best Distributed Tracing Tools 

Here are, in no particular order, some of the most popular and capable distributed tracing tools out there.

Prometheus

License: Apache License 2.0

GitHub: https://github.com/prometheus/prometheus

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Prometheus is an open-source monitoring and alerting toolkit designed for reliability and scalability, primarily used for monitoring and alerting on metrics from container-based infrastructures. It is particularly well-suited for monitoring Kubernetes environments. It was developed by SoundCloud and is now a part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a graduated project.

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Prometheus collects and stores metrics in a time-series database, allowing users to query and analyze these metrics using the PromQL query language. The system's architecture is based on a pull model, where Prometheus servers periodically scrape metrics from target services or applications, unlike a push model where data is sent to the monitoring system by the monitored services.

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While Prometheus is an excellent tool for monitoring and alerting, it does not provide native distributed tracing capabilities. However, it can be integrated with other tools in the CNCF ecosystem, such as Jaeger or OpenTelemetry, to provide distributed tracing functionality. These tools can work together to give a comprehensive view of a system's performance, combining the strength of Prometheus's metric collection and analysis with the distributed tracing capabilities of Jaeger or OpenTelemetry.

OpenTelemetry

License: Apache License 2.0

GitHub: https://github.com/open-telemetry

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OpenTelemetry is an open-source observability framework that aims to provide a unified, standardized method for collecting and managing telemetry data, such as metrics, logs, and traces, from distributed systems. It is a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) project that was formed by merging two earlier projects, OpenTracing and OpenCensus.

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OpenTelemetry provides a set of APIs, libraries, agents, and instrumentation to facilitate the collection and management of telemetry data across various languages, platforms, and applications. It is designed to support and enable interoperability between various observability tools and platforms, reducing the need for custom integrations or vendor lock-in.

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The main components of OpenTelemetry include:

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• API: A set of language-specific interfaces for collecting telemetry data in applications and services.
• SDK: The implementation of the API, which provides various configurations and integrations to control the data collection process.
• Collector: A standalone service that receives, processes, and exports telemetry data to different backends like Prometheus, Jaeger, or other monitoring and tracing systems.

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Learn more in our detailed guide to OpenTelemetry & OpenTelemetry architecture

Jaeger

License:  Apache License 2.0

GitHub: https://github.com/jaegertracing/jaeger

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Jaeger is an open-source distributed tracing system. It was created by Uber Technologies and is now part of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) as a graduated project. Jaeger helps track and understand the flow of requests or transactions across various services and components in a distributed system, enabling teams to identify latency issues, detect bottlenecks, and improve overall system reliability and performance.

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The main components of Jaeger include:

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• Client libraries: Instrumentation libraries for various programming languages, which are used to generate and report trace data from applications and services.
• Agent: A lightweight process that runs on the same host as the instrumented application, receiving trace data from the client libraries and forwarding it to the collectors.
• Collector: A service that receives, processes, and stores the trace data from the agents or directly from the client libraries.
• Query service: A service that retrieves and processes the stored trace data, enabling users to search, filter, and analyze traces.
• User interface: A web-based application that visualizes trace data, providing an easy-to-use interface for exploring and analyzing traces.

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Learn more in our detailed guide to Jaeger tracing (coming soon)

Zipkin

License: Apache License 2.0

GitHub: https://github.com/openzipkin/zipkin

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Zipkin is an open-source distributed tracing system designed to help developers and operations teams gain insights into the performance and behavior of distributed applications, such as microservices or service-oriented architectures. Based on Google's Dapper project, it was originally developed by Twitter and is now a part of the OpenZipkin project.

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Zipkin enables users to track and understand the flow of requests or transactions across various services and components in a distributed system, making it easier to identify latency issues, detect bottlenecks, and improve overall system reliability and performance.

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Like Jaeger, Zipkin offers instrumentation libraries, a collector, and UI. Additional components of Zipkin include:

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• Storage: A pluggable storage backend that persists the collected trace data. Zipkin supports multiple storage options, including in-memory, MySQL, Cassandra, and Elasticsearch.
• Query API: An API that retrieves and processes the stored trace data, enabling users to search, filter, and analyze traces.

How to Choose Distributed Tracing Tools 

Developer Workflow Integrations

Distributed tracing tools should offer workflow integration options to enhance the effectiveness, efficiency, and usability of these tools for developers and operations teams. Workflow integration options provide several benefits:

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• Centralized monitoring: Integrating distributed tracing tools with other monitoring and observability platforms provides a unified view of system performance, making it easier to correlate trace data with metrics, logs, and other system information.
• Faster incident resolution: Integrating distributed tracing tools with incident management and alerting systems allows teams to receive timely notifications when issues arise, streamline root cause analysis, and resolve incidents more quickly.
• Customization and automation: Workflow integrations enable users to create custom automations and actions, such as triggering automated scaling, deployments, or rollbacks based on specific conditions or thresholds detected by the tracing tools.
• Collaboration and communication: Integration with collaboration tools, such as chat applications or ticketing systems, helps teams share information, coordinate efforts, and collaborate more effectively when addressing performance issues or incidents.
• Continuous improvement: By integrating distributed tracing tools with continuous integration and continuous deployment (CI/CD) pipelines, teams can monitor and optimize the performance of their applications throughout the development lifecycle, ensuring that performance issues are detected and addressed before they impact end-users.
• Enhanced context: Integrating with other tools in the development and operations ecosystem provides additional context for the trace data, which can help teams identify patterns, trends, and root causes more effectively.
• Vendor-agnostic approach: Offering workflow integration options ensures that distributed tracing tools can be easily adopted and used in various environments and technology stacks, regardless of the specific tools and platforms being used by the team.
• Improved user experience: Seamless integration with familiar tools and platforms enhances the user experience, making it easier for teams to adopt and leverage distributed tracing tools in their daily workflows.

Deployment Across Services, Environments and the Entire Tech Stack

Distributed tracing tools should offer deployment across services, environments, and the entire tech stack to provide a comprehensive view of system performance, ensure compatibility, and maximize the effectiveness of tracing efforts. Key reasons for this include:

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• Full visibility: Deployment across the entire tech stack ensures that performance data is collected from all services and components, enabling a holistic understanding of the system's behavior and facilitating efficient troubleshooting and optimization.
• Heterogeneous environments: Modern distributed systems often involve a mix of technologies, languages, and platforms. Supporting deployment across the entire tech stack ensures that tracing tools can effectively monitor and analyze such diverse environments.
• Consistency and standardization: Deploying tracing tools across services and environments enables consistent data collection and analysis, which simplifies the process of identifying patterns, trends, and anomalies in system performance.
• Adaptability: As systems evolve and new technologies are introduced, tracing tools that support deployment across the entire tech stack can be easily adapted to accommodate these changes without requiring significant reconfiguration or customization.
• Performance optimization: A comprehensive view of the entire system enables teams to identify bottlenecks, inefficiencies, and areas for improvement, leading to better overall performance and user experience.
• Simplified monitoring: Deploying tracing tools across services and environments reduces the need for multiple, disparate monitoring solutions, which can be challenging to manage and maintain.
• Enhanced collaboration: By offering visibility across the entire tech stack, distributed tracing tools facilitate better communication and collaboration between different teams responsible for various services or components, enabling a more unified approach to performance monitoring and optimization.
• Improved reliability: Comprehensive tracing across the entire tech stack helps teams proactively identify and address potential issues before they escalate and impact end-users, leading to increased system reliability and uptime.

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