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Distributed tracing overview

As a service owner, you can use distributed tracing to instrument your services to gather insights into your service architecture. You can use the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform for monitoring, network profiling, and troubleshooting the interaction between components in modern, cloud-native, microservices-based applications.

With the distributed tracing platform, you can perform the following functions:

  • Monitor distributed transactions

  • Optimize performance and latency

  • Perform root cause analysis

The distributed tracing platform consists of three components:

  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Jaeger), which is based on the open source Jaeger project.

  • Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Tempo), which is based on the open source Grafana Tempo project.

  • Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry, which is based on the open source OpenTelemetry project.

Component versions in the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform 2.8

Operator Component Version

Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Jaeger)

Jaeger

1.42

Red Hat build of OpenTelemetry

OpenTelemetry

0.74.0

Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Tempo)

Tempo

0.1.0

Technology Preview features

This release introduces support for the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Tempo) as a Technology Preview feature for Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform.

The Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Tempo) is a Technology Preview feature only. Technology Preview features are not supported with Red Hat production service level agreements (SLAs) and might not be functionally complete. Red Hat does not recommend using them in production. These features provide early access to upcoming product features, enabling customers to test functionality and provide feedback during the development process.

For more information about the support scope of Red Hat Technology Preview features, see Technology Preview Features Support Scope.

The feature uses version 0.1.0 of the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform (Tempo) and version 2.0.1 of the upstream distributed tracing platform (Tempo) components.

You can use the distributed tracing platform (Tempo) to replace Jaeger so that you can use S3-compatible storage instead of ElasticSearch. Most users who use the distributed tracing platform (Tempo) instead of Jaeger will not notice any difference in functionality because the distributed tracing platform (Tempo) supports the same ingestion and query protocols as Jaeger and uses the same user interface.

If you enable this Technology Preview feature, note the following limitations of the current implementation:

  • The distributed tracing platform (Tempo) currently does not support disconnected installations. (TRACING-3145)

  • When you use the Jaeger user interface (UI) with the distributed tracing platform (Tempo), the Jaeger UI lists only services that have sent traces within the last 15 minutes. For services that have not sent traces within the last 15 minutes, those traces are still stored even though they are not visible in the Jaeger UI. (TRACING-3139)

Expanded support for the Tempo Operator is planned for future releases of the Red Hat OpenShift distributed tracing platform. Possible additional features might include support for TLS authentication, multitenancy, and multiple clusters. For more information about the Tempo Operator, see the Tempo community documentation.

Bug fixes

This release addresses Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVEs) and bug fixes.

Getting support

If you experience difficulty with a procedure described in this documentation, or with OpenShift Container Platform in general, visit the Red Hat Customer Portal. From the Customer Portal, you can:

  • Search or browse through the Red Hat Knowledgebase of articles and solutions relating to Red Hat products.

  • Submit a support case to Red Hat Support.

  • Access other product documentation.

To identify issues with your cluster, you can use Insights in OpenShift Cluster Manager Hybrid Cloud Console. Insights provides details about issues and, if available, information on how to solve a problem.

If you have a suggestion for improving this documentation or have found an error, submit a Jira issue for the most relevant documentation component. Please provide specific details, such as the section name and OpenShift Container Platform version.

Making open source more inclusive

Red Hat is committed to replacing problematic language in our code, documentation, and web properties. We are beginning with these four terms: master, slave, blacklist, and whitelist. Because of the enormity of this endeavor, these changes will be implemented gradually over several upcoming releases. For more details, see our CTO Chris Wright’s message.