Distributed Tracing with Zipkin

Distributed Tracing with Zipkin is a powerful tool that enables developers to trace and profile requests as they propagate through a microservices architecture. Zipkin is an open-source software that helps in tracing requests made to a microservices-based application. It provides a way to see the overall picture of how requests are routed through microservices and the individual latency of each.

Syntax

A typical Zipkin tracing workflow involves three main components:

• Instrumenting your applications with Zipkin compatible tracing libraries.
• Starting a Zipkin server to collect and store tracing data.
• Querying and visualizing tracing data with Zipkin UI.

Example

Imagine a scenario where you have several microservices that collectively handle a request. With Zipkin, you can trace and visualize the request as it passes through these microservices.

Zipkin can generate tracing information for every request that passes through the microservices. In the example trace below, a request is made to a service that invokes several other services during processing:

                                             web-service
                                                   |
send-request  ->  microservice1  ->  microservice2  |  ->  final-response

The resulting trace generated by Zipkin would show the specific times taken by each service (microservice1 and microservice2) to process the request. This information can be used to fine-tune or optimize services with high latencies or to identify any bottlenecks.

Output

Zipkin provides a user interface for tracing information - this includes a diagram showing how the request passed through each microservice in addition to a summary of statistics on how long various actions took.

Explanation

Zipkin tracing works by assigning a unique ID to every request. As the request passes through multiple microservices, the ID gets propagated and recorded in each microservice's logs. Once the request is completed, each microservice sends its tracing information to the Zipkin server where it is stored and consolidated to form the complete trace of the request.

Zipkin provides a flexible and open approach to distributed request tracking, allowing developers to use several different tracing libraries. Zipkin's power comes from being able to collate the traces of different request executions across multiple services and present them in a visual format.

Use

Zipkin can be used by developers working with microservices-based architectures to trace a request as it passes through each service involved in the request processing. Developers can use the information generated by Zipkin to identify bottlenecks, performance issues or service dependencies.

Important Points

• Zipkin provides an easy-to-use interface to trace and profile requests in microservices-based applications.
• Zipkin generates a unique ID for each request, which gets propagated and recorded in each microservice's logs as the request passes through services.
• The Zipkin user interface provides a visualization of how a request passes through all the microservices involved in processing it.
• Zipkin allows for the integration of different tracing libraries, giving developers the flexibility to use their preferred tracing tools.

Summary

Distributed tracing with Zipkin is a powerful tool for tracing and profiling requests as they propagate through microservices-based applications. Using Zipkin, developers can track a request as it travels through each service in the processing chain and analyze how long specific services take to process requests. Zipkin provides an easy-to-use interface to visualize tracing information and can integrate with various tracing libraries, providing more flexibility to developers.