Distributed Tracing with Istio
End-to-end request tracing across microservices using Jaeger or Zipkin, integrated automatically by Istio sidecars.
Distributed Tracing with Istio
End-to-end request tracing across microservices using Jaeger or Zipkin, integrated automatically by Istio sidecars.
What you'll learn
- Sidecars create spans automatically, but apps must propagate B3 headers
- Sampling rate: default 1% in production (configurable)
- Jaeger UI shows full request path and latency at each hop
How Istio Tracing Works
Istio Envoy sidecars automatically generate span data for every request. For traces to propagate across services, your application must forward B3 trace headers (x-request-id, x-b3-traceid, x-b3-spanid, x-b3-parentspanid, x-b3-sampled). Traces are sent to Jaeger or Zipkin.
Key takeaways
- Sidecars create spans automatically, but apps must propagate B3 headers
- Sampling rate: default 1% in production (configurable)
- Jaeger UI shows full request path and latency at each hop
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Discussion
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