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Configuring and deploying distributed tracing

The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator uses a custom resource definition (CRD) file that defines the architecture and configuration settings to be used when creating and deploying the distributed tracing platform resources. You can either install the default configuration or modify the file to better suit your business requirements.

Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform has predefined deployment strategies. You specify a deployment strategy in the custom resource file. When you create a distributed tracing platform instance the Operator uses this configuration file to create the objects necessary for the deployment.

Jaeger custom resource file showing deployment strategy
apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: MyConfigFile
spec:
  strategy: production (1)
1 The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator currently supports the following deployment strategies:

  • allInOne (Default) - This strategy is intended for development, testing, and demo purposes; it is not intended for production use. The main backend components, Agent, Collector, and Query service, are all packaged into a single executable which is configured, by default. to use in-memory storage.

    In-memory storage is not persistent, which means that if the distributed tracing platform instance shuts down, restarts, or is replaced, that your trace data will be lost. And in-memory storage cannot be scaled, since each pod has its own memory. For persistent storage, you must use the production or streaming strategies, which use Elasticsearch as the default storage.

  • production - The production strategy is intended for production environments, where long term storage of trace data is important, as well as a more scalable and highly available architecture is required. Each of the backend components is therefore deployed separately. The Agent can be injected as a sidecar on the instrumented application. The Query and Collector services are configured with a supported storage type - currently Elasticsearch. Multiple instances of each of these components can be provisioned as required for performance and resilience purposes.

  • streaming - The streaming strategy is designed to augment the production strategy by providing a streaming capability that effectively sits between the Collector and the Elasticsearch backend storage. This provides the benefit of reducing the pressure on the backend storage, under high load situations, and enables other trace post-processing capabilities to tap into the real time span data directly from the streaming platform (AMQ Streams/ Kafka).

    The streaming strategy requires an additional Red Hat subscription for AMQ Streams.

The streaming deployment strategy is currently unsupported on IBM Z.

There are two ways to install and use Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing, as part of a service mesh or as a stand alone component. If you have installed distributed tracing as part of Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, you can perform basic configuration as part of the ServiceMeshControlPlane but for completely control you should configure a Jaeger CR and then reference your distributed tracing configuration file in the ServiceMeshControlPlane.

Deploying the distributed tracing default strategy from the web console

The custom resource definition (CRD) defines the configuration used when you deploy an instance of Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing. The default CR is named jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory and it is configured with minimal resources to ensure that you can successfully install it on a default OpenShift Container Platform installation. You can use this default configuration to create a Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform instance that uses the AllInOne deployment strategy, or you can define your own custom resource file.

In-memory storage is not persistent. If the Jaeger pod shuts down, restarts, or is replaced, your trace data will be lost. For persistent storage, you must use the production or streaming strategies, which use Elasticsearch as the default storage.
Prerequisites

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  2. Create a new project, for example tracing-system.

    If you are installing as part of Service Mesh, the distributed tracing resources must be installed in the same namespace as the ServiceMeshControlPlane resource, for example istio-system.

    1. Navigate to Home → Projects.

    2. Click Create Project.

    3. Enter tracing-system in the Name field.

    4. Click Create.

  3. Navigate to Operators → Installed Operators.

  4. If necessary, select tracing-system from the Project menu. You may have to wait a few moments for the Operators to be copied to the new project.

  5. Click the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator. On the Details tab, under Provided APIs, the Operator provides a single link.

  6. Under Jaeger, click Create Instance.

  7. On the Create Jaeger page, to install using the defaults, click Create to create the distributed tracing platform instance.

  8. On the Jaegers page, click the name of the distributed tracing platform instance, for example, jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory.

  9. On the Jaeger Details page, click the Resources tab. Wait until the pod has a status of "Running" before continuing.

Deploying the distributed tracing default strategy from the CLI

Follow this procedure to create an instance of distributed tracing platform from the command line.

Prerequisites

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed and verified.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the OpenShift CLI (oc) that matches your OpenShift Container Platform version.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform CLI as a user with the cluster-admin role.

    $ oc login --username=<NAMEOFUSER> https://<HOSTNAME>:8443

  2. Create a new project named tracing-system.

    $ oc new-project tracing-system

  3. Create a custom resource file named jaeger.yaml that contains the following text:

    Example jaeger-all-in-one.yaml
    apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory

  4. Run the following command to deploy distributed tracing platform:

    $ oc create -n tracing-system -f jaeger.yaml

  5. Run the following command to watch the progress of the pods during the installation process:

    $ oc get pods -n tracing-system -w

    After the installation process has completed, you should see output similar to the following example:

    NAME                                         READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory-cdff7897b-qhfdx   2/2     Running   0          24s

Deploying the distributed tracing production strategy from the web console

The production deployment strategy is intended for production environments that require a more scalable and highly available architecture, and where long-term storage of trace data is important.

Prerequisites

  • The OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator has been installed.

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  2. Create a new project, for example tracing-system.

    If you are installing as part of Service Mesh, the distributed tracing resources must be installed in the same namespace as the ServiceMeshControlPlane resource, for example istio-system.

    1. Navigate to Home → Projects.

    2. Click Create Project.

    3. Enter tracing-system in the Name field.

    4. Click Create.

  3. Navigate to Operators → Installed Operators.

  4. If necessary, select tracing-system from the Project menu. You may have to wait a few moments for the Operators to be copied to the new project.

  5. Click the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator. On the Overview tab, under Provided APIs, the Operator provides a single link.

  6. Under Jaeger, click Create Instance.

  7. On the Create Jaeger page, replace the default all-in-one YAML text with your production YAML configuration, for example:

    Example jaeger-production.yaml file with Elasticsearch
    apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger-production
  namespace:
spec:
  strategy: production
  ingress:
    security: oauth-proxy
  storage:
    type: elasticsearch
    elasticsearch:
      nodeCount: 3
      redundancyPolicy: SingleRedundancy
    esIndexCleaner:
      enabled: true
      numberOfDays: 7
      schedule: 55 23 * * *
    esRollover:
      schedule: '*/30 * * * *'

  8. Click Create to create the distributed tracing platform instance.

  9. On the Jaegers page, click the name of the distributed tracing platform instance, for example, jaeger-prod-elasticsearch.

  10. On the Jaeger Details page, click the Resources tab. Wait until all the pods have a status of "Running" before continuing.

Deploying the distributed tracing production strategy from the CLI

Follow this procedure to create an instance of distributed tracing platform from the command line.

Prerequisites

  • The OpenShift Elasticsearch Operator has been installed.

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the OpenShift CLI (oc) that matches your OpenShift Container Platform version.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform CLI as a user with the cluster-admin role.

    $ oc login --username=<NAMEOFUSER> https://<HOSTNAME>:8443

  2. Create a new project named tracing-system.

    $ oc new-project tracing-system

  3. Create a custom resource file named jaeger-production.yaml that contains the text of the example file in the previous procedure.

  4. Run the following command to deploy distributed tracing platform:

    $ oc create -n tracing-system -f jaeger-production.yaml

  5. Run the following command to watch the progress of the pods during the installation process:

    $ oc get pods -n tracing-system -w

    After the installation process has completed, you should see output similar to the following example:

    NAME                                                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerproduction-1-6676cf568gwhlw   2/2     Running   0          10m
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerproduction-2-bcd4c8bf5l6g6w   2/2     Running   0          10m
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerproduction-3-844d6d9694hhst   2/2     Running   0          10m
jaeger-production-collector-94cd847d-jwjlj                        1/1     Running   3          8m32s
jaeger-production-query-5cbfbd499d-tv8zf                          3/3     Running   3          8m32s

Deploying the distributed tracing streaming strategy from the web console

The streaming deployment strategy is intended for production environments that require a more scalable and highly available architecture, and where long-term storage of trace data is important.

The streaming strategy provides a streaming capability that sits between the Collector and the Elasticsearch storage. This reduces the pressure on the storage under high load situations, and enables other trace post-processing capabilities to tap into the real-time span data directly from the Kafka streaming platform.

The streaming strategy requires an additional Red Hat subscription for AMQ Streams. If you do not have an AMQ Streams subscription, contact your sales representative for more information.

The streaming deployment strategy is currently unsupported on IBM Z.
Prerequisites

  • The AMQ Streams Operator has been installed. If using version 1.4.0 or higher you can use self-provisioning. Otherwise you must create the Kafka instance.

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console as a user with the cluster-admin role.

  2. Create a new project, for example tracing-system.

    If you are installing as part of Service Mesh, the distributed tracing resources must be installed in the same namespace as the ServiceMeshControlPlane resource, for example istio-system.

    1. Navigate to Home → Projects.

    2. Click Create Project.

    3. Enter tracing-system in the Name field.

    4. Click Create.

  3. Navigate to Operators → Installed Operators.

  4. If necessary, select tracing-system from the Project menu. You may have to wait a few moments for the Operators to be copied to the new project.

  5. Click the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator. On the Overview tab, under Provided APIs, the Operator provides a single link.

  6. Under Jaeger, click Create Instance.

  7. On the Create Jaeger page, replace the default all-in-one YAML text with your streaming YAML configuration, for example:

Example jaeger-streaming.yaml file
apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger-streaming
spec:
  strategy: streaming
  collector:
    options:
      kafka:
        producer:
          topic: jaeger-spans
          #Note: If brokers are not defined,AMQStreams 1.4.0+ will self-provision Kafka.
          brokers: my-cluster-kafka-brokers.kafka:9092
  storage:
    type: elasticsearch
  ingester:
    options:
      kafka:
        consumer:
          topic: jaeger-spans
          brokers: my-cluster-kafka-brokers.kafka:9092

  1. Click Create to create the distributed tracing platform instance.

  2. On the Jaegers page, click the name of the distributed tracing platform instance, for example, jaeger-streaming.

  3. On the Jaeger Details page, click the Resources tab. Wait until all the pods have a status of "Running" before continuing.

Deploying the distributed tracing streaming strategy from the CLI

Follow this procedure to create an instance of distributed tracing platform from the command line.

Prerequisites

  • The AMQ Streams Operator has been installed. If using version 1.4.0 or higher you can use self-provisioning. Otherwise you must create the Kafka instance.

  • The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform Operator has been installed.

  • You have reviewed the instructions for how to customize the deployment.

  • You have access to the OpenShift CLI (oc) that matches your OpenShift Container Platform version.

  • You have access to the cluster as a user with the cluster-admin role.

Procedure

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform CLI as a user with the cluster-admin role.

    $ oc login --username=<NAMEOFUSER> https://<HOSTNAME>:8443

  2. Create a new project named tracing-system.

    $ oc new-project tracing-system

  3. Create a custom resource file named jaeger-streaming.yaml that contains the text of the example file in the previous procedure.

  4. Run the following command to deploy Jaeger:

    $ oc create -n tracing-system -f jaeger-streaming.yaml

  5. Run the following command to watch the progress of the pods during the installation process:

    $ oc get pods -n tracing-system -w

    After the installation process has completed, you should see output similar to the following example:

    NAME                                                              READY   STATUS    RESTARTS   AGE
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerstreaming-1-697b66d6fcztcnn   2/2     Running   0          5m40s
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerstreaming-2-5f4b95c78b9gckz   2/2     Running   0          5m37s
elasticsearch-cdm-jaegersystemjaegerstreaming-3-7b6d964576nnz97   2/2     Running   0          5m5s
jaeger-streaming-collector-6f6db7f99f-rtcfm                       1/1     Running   0          80s
jaeger-streaming-entity-operator-6b6d67cc99-4lm9q                 3/3     Running   2          2m18s
jaeger-streaming-ingester-7d479847f8-5h8kc                        1/1     Running   0          80s
jaeger-streaming-kafka-0                                          2/2     Running   0          3m1s
jaeger-streaming-query-65bf5bb854-ncnc7                           3/3     Running   0          80s
jaeger-streaming-zookeeper-0                                      2/2     Running   0          3m39s

Validating your deployment

Accessing the Jaeger console

To access the Jaeger console you must have either Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh or Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing installed, and Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform installed, configured, and deployed.

The installation process creates a route to access the Jaeger console.

If you know the URL for the Jaeger console, you can access it directly. If you do not know the URL, use the following directions.

Procedure from OpenShift console

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform web console as a user with cluster-admin rights. If you use Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, you must have an account with the dedicated-admin role.

  2. Navigate to Networking → Routes.

  3. On the Routes page, select the control plane project, for example tracing-system, from the Namespace menu.

    The Location column displays the linked address for each route.

  4. If necessary, use the filter to find the jaeger route. Click the route Location to launch the console.

  5. Click Log In With OpenShift.

Procedure from the CLI

  1. Log in to the OpenShift Container Platform CLI as a user with the cluster-admin role. If you use Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated, you must have an account with the dedicated-admin role.

    $ oc login --username=<NAMEOFUSER> https://<HOSTNAME>:6443

  2. To query for details of the route using the command line, enter the following command. In this example, tracing-system is the control plane namespace.

    $ export JAEGER_URL=$(oc get route -n tracing-system jaeger -o jsonpath='{.spec.host}')

  3. Launch a browser and navigate to https://<JAEGER_URL>, where <JAEGER_URL> is the route that you discovered in the previous step.

  4. Log in using the same user name and password that you use to access the OpenShift Container Platform console.

  5. If you have added services to the service mesh and have generated traces, you can use the filters and Find Traces button to search your trace data.

    If you are validating the console installation, there is no trace data to display.

Customizing your deployment

Deployment best practices

  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing instance names must be unique. If you want to have multiple Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform instances and are using sidecar injected agents, then the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform instances should have unique names, and the injection annotation should explicitly specify the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform instance name the tracing data should be reported to.

  • If you have a multitenant implementation and tenants are separated by namespaces, deploy a Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform instance to each tenant namespace.

    • Agent as a daemonset is not supported for multitenant installations or Red Hat OpenShift Dedicated. Agent as a sidecar is the only supported configuration for these use cases.

  • If you are installing distributed tracing as part of Red Hat OpenShift Service Mesh, the distributed tracing resources must be installed in the same namespace as the ServiceMeshControlPlane resource.

For information about configuring persistent storage, see Understanding persistent storage and the appropriate configuration topic for your chosen storage option.

Distributed tracing default configuration options

The Jaeger custom resource (CR) defines the architecture and settings to be used when creating the distributed tracing platform resources. You can modify these parameters to customize your distributed tracing platform implementation to your business needs.

Jaeger generic YAML example
apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: name
spec:
  strategy: <deployment_strategy>
  allInOne:
    options: {}
    resources: {}
  agent:
    options: {}
    resources: {}
  collector:
    options: {}
    resources: {}
  sampling:
    options: {}
  storage:
    type:
    options: {}
  query:
    options: {}
    resources: {}
  ingester:
    options: {}
    resources: {}
  options: {}
Table 1. Jaeger parameters
Parameter Description Values Default value

apiVersion:

API version to use when creating the object.

jaegertracing.io/v1

jaegertracing.io/v1

kind:

Defines the kind of Kubernetes object to create.

jaeger

metadata:

Data that helps uniquely identify the object, including a name string, UID, and optional namespace.

OpenShift Container Platform automatically generates the UID and completes the namespace with the name of the project where the object is created.

name:

Name for the object.

The name of your distributed tracing platform instance.

jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory

spec:

Specification for the object to be created.

Contains all of the configuration parameters for your distributed tracing platform instance. When a common definition for all Jaeger components is required, it is defined under the spec node. When the definition relates to an individual component, it is placed under the spec/<component> node.

N/A

strategy:

Jaeger deployment strategy

allInOne, production, or streaming

allInOne

allInOne:

Because the allInOne image deploys the Agent, Collector, Query, Ingester, and Jaeger UI in a single pod, configuration for this deployment must nest component configuration under the allInOne parameter.

agent:

Configuration options that define the Agent.

collector:

Configuration options that define the Jaeger Collector.

sampling:

Configuration options that define the sampling strategies for tracing.

storage:

Configuration options that define the storage. All storage-related options must be placed under storage, rather than under the allInOne or other component options.

query:

Configuration options that define the Query service.

ingester:

Configuration options that define the Ingester service.

The following example YAML is the minimum required to create a Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform deployment using the default settings.

Example minimum required dist-tracing-all-in-one.yaml
apiVersion: jaegertracing.io/v1
kind: Jaeger
metadata:
  name: jaeger-all-in-one-inmemory

Jaeger Collector configuration options

The Jaeger Collector is the component responsible for receiving the spans that were captured by the tracer and writing them to persistent Elasticsearch storage when using the production strategy, or to AMQ Streams when using the streaming strategy.

The Collectors are stateless and thus many instances of Jaeger Collector can be run in parallel. Collectors require almost no configuration, except for the location of the Elasticsearch cluster.

Table 2. Parameters used by the Operator to define the Jaeger Collector
Parameter Description Values 
collector:
  replicas:

Specifies the number of Collector replicas to create.

Integer, for example, 5
Table 3. Configuration parameters passed to the Collector
Parameter Description Values 
spec:
 collector:
  options: {}

Configuration options that define the Jaeger Collector.

 
options:
  collector:
    num-workers:

The number of workers pulling from the queue.

Integer, for