How-To: Set up Zipkin for distributed tracing

Configure self hosted mode

For self hosted mode, on running dapr init:

1. The following YAML file is created by default in $HOME/.dapr/config.yaml (on Linux/Mac) or %USERPROFILE%\.dapr\config.yaml (on Windows) and it is referenced by default on dapr run calls unless otherwise overridden `:

• config.yaml

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
  name: daprConfig
  namespace: default
spec:
  tracing:
    samplingRate: "1"
    zipkin:
      endpointAddress: "http://localhost:9411/api/v2/spans"

2. The openzipkin/zipkin docker container is launched on running dapr init or it can be launched with the following code.

Launch Zipkin using Docker:

docker run -d -p 9411:9411 openzipkin/zipkin

3. The applications launched with dapr run by default reference the config file in $HOME/.dapr/config.yaml or %USERPROFILE%\.dapr\config.yaml and can be overridden with the Dapr CLI using the --config param:

dapr run --app-id mynode --app-port 3000 node app.js

Viewing Traces

To view traces, in your browser go to http://localhost:9411 and you will see the Zipkin UI.

Configure Kubernetes

The following steps shows you how to configure Dapr to send distributed tracing data to Zipkin running as a container in your Kubernetes cluster, and how to view them.

Setup

First, deploy Zipkin:

kubectl create deployment zipkin --image openzipkin/zipkin

Create a Kubernetes service for the Zipkin pod:

kubectl expose deployment zipkin --type ClusterIP --port 9411

Next, create the following YAML file locally:

• tracing.yaml configuration

apiVersion: dapr.io/v1alpha1
kind: Configuration
metadata:
  name: tracing
  namespace: default
spec:
  tracing:
    samplingRate: "1"
    zipkin:
      endpointAddress: "http://zipkin.default.svc.cluster.local:9411/api/v2/spans"

Now, deploy the the Dapr configuration file:

kubectl apply -f tracing.yaml

In order to enable this configuration for your Dapr sidecar, add the following annotation to your pod spec template:

annotations:
  dapr.io/config: "tracing"

That’s it! Your sidecar is now configured to send traces to Zipkin.

Viewing Tracing Data

To view traces, connect to the Zipkin service and open the UI:

kubectl port-forward svc/zipkin 9411:9411

In your browser, go to http://localhost:9411 and you will see the Zipkin UI.

References

• Zipkin for distributed tracing
• W3C distributed tracing