Using Jaeger distributed tracing - Tracing | Observability

If you do not want to install all of the components of Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing, you can still use distributed tracing on OpenShift Container Platform with OpenShift Serverless.

Configuring Jaeger to enable distributed tracing

To enable distributed tracing using Jaeger, you must install and configure Jaeger as a standalone integration.

Prerequisites

You have cluster administrator permissions on OpenShift Container Platform, or you have cluster or dedicated administrator permissions on Red Hat OpenShift Service on AWS or OpenShift Dedicated.
You have installed the OpenShift Serverless Operator, Knative Serving, and Knative Eventing.
You have installed the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator.
You have installed the OpenShift CLI (oc).
You have created a project or have access to a project with the appropriate roles and permissions to create applications and other workloads.

Procedure

Create and apply a Jaeger custom resource (CR) that contains the following:

Jaeger CR

apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger
  namespace: default

Enable tracing for Knative Serving, by editing the KnativeServing CR and adding a YAML configuration for tracing:

Tracing YAML example for Serving

apiVersion: operator.knative.dev/v1beta1
kind: KnativeServing
metadata:
  name: knative-serving
  namespace: knative-serving
spec:
  config:
    tracing:
      sample-rate: "0.1" (1)
      backend: zipkin (2)
      zipkin-endpoint: "http://jaeger-collector.default.svc.cluster.local:9411/api/v2/spans" (3)
      debug: "false" (4)

1	The `sample-rate` defines sampling probability. Using `sample-rate: "0.1"` means that 1 in 10 traces are sampled.
2	`backend` must be set to `zipkin`.
3	The `zipkin-endpoint` must point to your `jaeger-collector` service endpoint. To get this endpoint, substitute the namespace where the Jaeger CR is applied.
4	Debugging should be set to `false`. Enabling debug mode by setting `debug: "true"` allows all spans to be sent to the server, bypassing sampling.

Enable tracing for Knative Eventing by editing the KnativeEventing CR:

Tracing YAML example for Eventing

apiVersion: operator.knative.dev/v1beta1
kind: KnativeEventing
metadata:
  name: knative-eventing
  namespace: knative-eventing
spec:
  config:
    tracing:
      sample-rate: "0.1" (1)
      backend: zipkin (2)
      zipkin-endpoint: "http://jaeger-collector.default.svc.cluster.local:9411/api/v2/spans" (3)
      debug: "false" (4)

1	The `sample-rate` defines sampling probability. Using `sample-rate: "0.1"` means that 1 in 10 traces are sampled.
2	Set `backend` to `zipkin`.
3	Point the `zipkin-endpoint` to your `jaeger-collector` service endpoint. To get this endpoint, substitute the namespace where the Jaeger CR is applied.
4	Debugging should be set to `false`. Enabling debug mode by setting `debug: "true"` allows all spans to be sent to the server, bypassing sampling.

Verification

You can access the Jaeger web console to see tracing data, by using the jaeger route.

Get the jaeger route’s hostname by entering the following command:

$ oc get route jaeger -n default

Example output

NAME     HOST/PORT                         PATH   SERVICES       PORT    TERMINATION   WILDCARD
jaeger   jaeger-default.apps.example.com          jaeger-query   <all>   reencrypt     None

Open the endpoint address in your browser to view the console.